Thursday, October 3, 2019

Three Beautiful Things 10/02/19: Cooking Pork Chops, No TV Signal!, Rays Defeat the A's

1. For several days, I've been imagining slow cooking the last of the pork chops from our pork order over a year ago. At some point in my younger life -- was it when I was a kid? during my first marriage? I'm not sure -- I used to love pork chops cooked in Campbell's mushroom soup. I wanted to fix something like that, but I wanted to use fresh mushrooms and not use the sodium packed condensed soup. I decided the way to go was to slow cook the pork chops in yellow curry sauce. So, I got out yellow curry paste, coconut milk, fish sauce, soy sauce, and brown sugar and made a curry sauce. I cooked up some onions along with mushrooms and combined them with the curry sauce in the crock pot and then put four pork chops in, set the crock pot on low, and let them cook.

Later, I made a batch of jasmine rice, Debbie cooked up some kale, and in the middle of the afternoon, before the baseball game came on, I enjoyed a dinner that combined nostalgia and my favorite way to cook in the present -- making curry.

2. I went into the Vizio room about an hour before the first pitch of tonight's Wild Card Playoff game between the A's and the Rays was scheduled to start. As the television came on, a message appeared telling me that that the television was disconnected from our home's internet network. I checked my cell phone. The Wi-Fi connection was fine on it. I turned the tv on and off a couple or three times and the message persisted.

I took a deep breath. Rather than panic, I told myself there had to be a solution to this problem. I did an internet search on my cell phone and brought up the Amazon Fire troubleshooting page. Sure enough, I read instructions telling me how to reboot my Amazon Fire Stick. The instructions were simple. I did it. The internet connection was restored and went to ESPN and watched the Baseball Tonight pre-game show and then the baseball game.

I'm glad I didn't freak out.

3. I was fired up to watch this game. I hadn't seen the Rays play this season and since buying a television last summer, I've enjoyed watching the A's. One of the A's players, Marcus Semien, was one of the best contributors to the Kellogg Johnniez, my League 2 team in fantasy baseball.

I texted Don, a lifelong A's fan. I texted Cas because we are on constant ARod watch and ARod was an analyst for the broadcast tonight. (ARod did not disappoint! Against his will, he made me laugh out loud several times because of things he said!) Stu and I texted back and forth about the game.

The game was one-sided. The Rays' Yandy Diaz led off the game by hitting a home run and homered again in his second time at bat. Tommy Pham (a member of the Kellogg Johnniez) and Avisail Garcia also homered. The Rays' Charlie Morton struggled a bit on the mound, but managed to snuff every A's rally before giving way to a small parade of relief pitchers who also stymied Oakland.

The Rays won the game, 5-1 and now face the daunting task of playing the Houston Astros in a best 3 out 5 playoff series starting on Friday.

One afterthought: I don't like saying this, but it's what I saw. From 2016-18, Oakland's Khris Davis hit 40 home runs or more each season. I watched him quite a bit a year ago and he was a fearsome hitter, especially for power. I hadn't seen him play for a while when I tuned in tonight. I was dismayed watching him tonight. He looked lost. He looked demoralized. Something was off with him. He struck out three times. It was painful to watch him tonight. I hope he can sort things out in the off-season and return with a better frame of mind next season.

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