How About Those Cubs Now?

 About two months ago I asked AI, specifically Gemini, how the Cubs would do this season.  The results were not kind but also not inaccurate based on their standing at the time.  The Cubs were 7.5 games behind the division-leading Milwaukee Brewers.  

Two months later, the Cubs are doing better.  As of today (edit 8/11/26), they are 5.0 games back.  That's still a lot to overcome in two months but not insurmountable.  They play the Brewers seven more times this year and they have to take at least four, maybe five of those games.

Gemini and Google AI say they could have as many as 94 wins this season.  I think it will be closer to 90, but I also think their postseason hopes have increased in the last two months, especially with the moves they made at the trade deadline.

Baseball is very cyclic, and teams go through win and lose streaks throughout the season.  They had two 10-game winning streaks that were followed by a very rough May and early June.  It looks like they righted the ship, but who knows what the final 40+ games will bring.

As a kid, I never watched spectator sports.  When I reached adulthood and got more interested in sports, I still waited until midseason to really pay attention to baseball.  But living down here, watching Chicago sports is one of the few connections I have to home.

I've seen the Bears go to the Super Bowl twice.  I've seen the Bulls win 6 championships.  I've seen the Blackhawks win a few Stanley Cups, and I've seen the Sox and the Cubs win a World Series.

The only thing left is a Chicago Subway World Series.  I'm certain the Sox can make the postseason, but I don't think they can make it to the WS this year.  And I'm running out of time.

Mid-Summer Check in

 With the kids home for summer break, I skipped a lot of June and July posting.  Yeah, that's the ticket.  It had nothing to do with my laziness or lack of anything eventful to write about.

The kids start middle school two weeks from today, and they are getting Cabin Fever and on each other's nerves more than usual.  

It's the Hot as Hell part of the year down here. This summer seems even more so. June was Hell's porch.  July is Satan's crotch.  August will likely make us long for June. Which makes it harder for me to do some much needed tasks outside or even in the garages.  Don't even ask me to go up in the attic.  

I did manage to fix another hole in the wall my kids created by slamming the door when they go to the backyard.  I'm sure it's more one kid than the other but I won't say which one.  It was simultaneously tedious and fun to be able to take my time on this one.  After wedging a piece of spare wood (Dad Skill Unlocked) I applied a generous coat of spackle.  Too generous, as the thickest part couldn't get enough airflow to dry, but I was able to fix that with the second coat.  Then, using the sander I bought from our MAGA neighbor at his garage sale, I was able to sand it down.  Because the chair rail is in the way, It was hard to get it perfectly plumb and smooth but it is good enough.

I'm not sure why the door stopper had been removed...but it's back now so hopefully this doesn't happen again.

When we got back from our relatively new, annual Michigan-Chicago excursion, we discovered our Water Heater was shedding water.  Our house is dual zoned for heating and air conditioning and we replaced one water heater a few years ago.  Now it was time to replace the other one.

We went with a tankless option this time.  It was more expensive ($6500), but it should pay for itself if we are stuck in this Hellhole State for the rest of our lives. 

We also had to fix the brakes on Nightingale's car, along with a few other overdue maintenance issues, another $1100.  It's times like these that I really feel terrible about not having an income.  There was also a little drama with the company that installed the heater; I'll try to do a separate write-up on that for posterity's sake.  

Our washing machine has been giving us grief for a while now too.  It started slowly.  Certain cycles wouldn't complete, and the vague error code didn't tell me much.  I would restart the load, and it would work.  Then it started being more consistent and on any cycle.  I'd have to do a Rinse and Spin on most loads to get the soap out.  Finally, after Google searches and YouTube videos, I learned that the machine wasn't draining properly so I had to manually drain it.  

Yesterday a YouTube video took me through a few things it could be.  I didn't want to take the machine apart to change the drain motor (or whatever it is called).  I recalled that a previous video said that you should unplug the machine for 5 minutes.

This worked!  We are still likely on Borrowed Time but if we can get another year or more out of it, I will consider that even more of a win.

How About Those Cubs

 Just for fun, I asked AI, specifically Gemini, the following question:

Based on their current record, what is the projected Win-Loss record for the Chicago Cubs?

Gemini's response:

The Chicago Cubs currently hold a record of  36–34 through their first 70 games of the 2026 Major League Baseball season.

A standard MLB regular season consists of exactly 162 games. Based strictly on their current winning percentage of  .514, their simple mathematically projected final record is:

Projected Record: 83–79 (Rounded from 83.3 wins and 78.7 losses)

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Advanced Projection (Pythagorean Record)

If you want to look slightly deeper than their raw surface record, we can use Baseball-Reference's Pythagorean Win-Loss formula, which projects future success based on the team's actual run differential (runs scored vs. runs allowed) rather than just pure luck or timing.

Through 69 games, the Cubs have scored 317 runs and allowed 313 runs. Because they are outscoring opponents by a razor-thin margin, their expected performance aligns almost identically with their actual pace:

• Pythagorean Pace: 35–34 (.507 winning percentage)
• Pythagorean Projected Final Record: 82–80

Sitting at 7.5 games behind the first-place Milwaukee Brewers in the NL Central, a final record hovering right around 82 to 83 wins will likely put them dead center in a chaotic battle for a National League Wild Card spot down the stretch.

I'm inclined to agree with this prediction.  The Cubs Magic Number is currently 102.  This time last year it was 90 (or 88, the site listed both numbers for June 12, 2025.)  Either way, after starting the season hot with two 10-game winning streaks, they had a 10-game losing streak in between some other tough losses.  

It's not impossible they couldn't get hot again, after all the is how baseball works.  But they would likely need some of their division rivals to go cold.  I guess we have 92 games left to find out.  I try not to get too invested until August or at least after the All-Star Break.

Summer is Here

Edit from the future:  Yet another post sitting in my draft folder.  I'm gonna try to wrap it up and publish it, backdating this to the date I wrote it.

Seasonal summer begins on June 21st, which is also Father's Day, but most of the USA thinks of summer as the time between Memorial Day and Labor Day.

This year, Memorial Day — the last Monday in May — fell on the earliest possible date on the calendar, and Labor Day — the first Monday in September,— will fall on the latest possible date on the calendar, Sept. 7. Thus we can look forward to the longest possible unofficial summer.

The 105 day span won’t happen again until 2037, though it generally happens every five to seven years.

The Friday before Memorial Day weekend was the kids' last day of school.  The kids who at least once a week asked if they really had to go to school opted to go every day even though they were implicitly given permission by the educators to skip the last three days.  They wanted to see their friends one last time and the last three days are essentially a party for the kids.

We packed up and headed to St Louis to meet up with Katness.  When the trip was originally planned, she was gonna come down that Friday.  But things happen.  One kid had a baseball playoff he couldn't miss.  Another had a theatre activity he also couldn't miss.  So she couldn't come until Saturday, but was wiggy on the time of arrival.  

This made meeting up with my one college friend that I see once in a while challenging.  Initially, I was stressing about going to the Science Museum and then trying to have lunch with a bunch of people that might not cross-pollinate well.  

Eventually, I just said Fuck It.  And it worked out because we all sat down for lunch and were able to get separate checks.  

The rest of the weekend was the usual challenge.  Katness wants to fill every moment with doing something, and there's nothing wrong with that.  But our respective kids really just want to hang out with each other, either at the pool or playing Minecraft.  

It usually works out but I need to remind myself the next time we are getting together to factor that in to the equation.  

A Day in the Life

On Sundays, Nightingale meal preps for the week.  Her day starts with trips to Aldi, Kroger and occasionally Costco.  Meanwhile, I do her laundry.  I use to do all the laundry but I've found that it's easier to break it up over the week, especially since we all have our own laundry baskets, which we mostly keep separated.

On Mondays, I clean up the kitchen of anything that couldn't go in the dishwasher overnight.

Thursdays are usually pasta for dinner, and Fridays are pizza night, usually frozen.  Boris gets cheese, Natasha gets pepperoni, and NG and I share a Detroit-style.

I spent the lion's share of this week power washing the detached garage, among other things.  It looks good, but that won't last, but that doesn't mean you don't do it.  That is a direct quote from Nightingale In fact, I should do it more often.  

I'm slowly knocking off a lot of little things on the To-Do List.  I have a very short window before the weather becomes unbearable to do anything outside.  In fact, it seems to have gotten warmer sooner than in previous years.

I've managed to lose about 15 lbs, but  I don't recommend anyone do it the way I did.  I've cut back on fried food and eat more salads for lunch.  I have also managed to run three times since buying those expensive running shoes last month.  But the game changer that I don't recommend was a bout of food poisoning one Saturday last month ( before the shoe purchase).  I couldn't keep anything down, not even water.  It was 24 hours of misery.

Always Something to Remind You

I have a couple of email subscriptions that do me no good down here.  More specifically, I get emails from Binny's Beverage Depot, Peoria Packing Company, and the Polish Museum of America. I could easily unsubscribe from all of them (except the PMA because they are luddites and you to email them) but I choose not to.

I also get emails from Zillow, Redfin, and other Real Estate entities that tell me my house in PP is worth X more than when I bought and sold it.  

Finally, I get the Book of Faces Memories, which used to be called On This Day after they bought it from TimeStamp.    

Those hurt.  

I really miss my Chicago house.  Yes, it had some warts.  No Central Air conditioning, the bedrooms were small and the bathrooms needed some work.  But I had finally got my garage the way I wanted it.  

But I'm trying to see a positive or at least something to hope for.   In the late 80s, my mom took me out of college because she fell into financial ruin, and instead of making the smart decision to apply for what was then abundant financial aid, she decided to just take me out of college.  There's more to that, but I won't go into it now.  

 And I wasted spent a lot of the 90s trying to get back to that life.  I seriously, naively, believed that some of the people I went to Northeast Missouri State University with actually cared about me.  

Have you ever been on a Stealth Date

 Have you ever been on a Stealth Date?  A Stealth Date is when someone thinks you and one of their friends would be perfect together, so they get both of you to go to something with them, but then your friend either doesn't show or disappears.

It took me 26 years to realize I was on a stealth Date back in 2000.  Mostly because I haven't really thought about that morning or dwelt on it for 26 years.  It's also possible I've been on other Stealth Dates that I wasn't aware of, because it's right there in the name.  Plus, I'm naive, and we Neurodivergents tend to initially take people at face value.  

Winnie, Stephanie, and I were supposed to go to a Street Art Fair one Saturday morning.  We agreed to meet at the Ogilvie Metra Center because they would be taking the Metra downtown.  When I got there, Stephanie said that Winnie had called her earlier and said she couldn't make it.

I didn't think anything of it at the time.  Now Stephanie happened to have forgotten her wallet, so she may or may not have been in on the Stealth Date thing, but I didn't think much about it at the time.  I really only paid for the water taxi downtown and a cup of coffee; she didn't want anything else.  We also somehow skipped the Art Fair and just walked through Crate & Barrel.

The thing is, Stephanie had a boyfriend, so I wasn't even in Pursuit Mode.  I tend to stay in my lane, like that.  I only saw Stephanie one more time that year.  She came to a party I had at my apartment, but didn't stay long.  I don't remember her last name or much about her, so I cannot really look her up.  Winnie and I also didn't stay friends.  She was just a little too weird even for me.