Status updates: Raimei, umping, and our nightmare DOD

Bits and pieces of the day...

• Raimei is doing very well after her dental surgery. For about 48 hours after she was completely stoned out of her kitty mind thanks to the time-release painkiller she was given. She's a bit more herself today and appears to be happy with the overall result, but maybe there's still some residual drugs.
• Umping has been good the past couple of weeks, and last night's three games at Cap Hill had a lot of fun moments marred only by a drop-in from the league office that, though generally inoffensive, still managed to feel disrespectful. Again, I don't think it was intentionally so, the messenger is just not that good at communicating. I did appreciate players going out of their way to tell said messenger that I was their favorite ump and by implication that I didn't need policing, but it won't mean anything to the league, I'm afraid. I've never heard a word from the league office about any feedback from players or anyone else, and I know for a fact there has been some. In that one respect they're a lousy outfit to work with—to the office we all are apparently interchangeable drones to be criticized freely but only praised begrudgingly—but as I remind myself when stuff like this happens, in a lot of other ways they're pretty good. But I do feel condescended to when I'm told of a "problem" (not a problem) and that nevertheless I seem to be doing fine when it's readily apparent that I'm the best they've got. I'm not sure how to word that without it sounding arrogant, but if you go by player feedback it's simply a fact, and seemingly reluctant "I guess you're fine" comments just leave me shaking my head.

• One topic of conversation during the umpire shift last night was the weird play in Wednesday's game between Your Seattle Mariners and the Future-Las-Vegas-But-Only-If-Nothing-Goes-Horribly-Wrong-And-I'll-Believe-It-When-I-See-It Athletics. In that game's first inning, a batter for the A's lined a pitch back up the middle that managed to get caught inside pitcher Logan Gilbert's jersey. In the video, you can see the home-plate umpire knew immediately how to call it and pointed to first base, but literally no one else in the ballpark knew what was supposed to happen. Is it a catch? It seems like a catch—the defender has possession of the ball and it never touches the ground or a fence. On the other hand, defenders are not allowed to use non-glove equipment (e.g. caps, catcher's masks) to assist in catching a ball and the penalty for doing so is three bases to the batter. That kind of thing would be intentional, though, which doesn't count here. So...what? In the end, the umpires agreed with the HP ump, it's treated like a batted ball hitting an umpire in the infield: ball is dead, batter gets a base hit, other runners if any stay put. (Similar to the situation I had in softball a while back, but in this case there was no runner at first base to complicate things.) It's a fair ruling, but it seems to me like it had to be made up on the fly, as it were, as I doubt a scenario like this had ever been contemplated.

• Chaos in Felon47’s regime just keeps on keeping on, as the Secretary of the Navy is the latest official to be fired. When you oust the head of the Navy in the middle of a largely Naval military engagement, there's either a serious problem with the Navy or a serious problem with the president and the defense department overall. Or, you know what, with this crop of clowns there's no reason there can't be serious problems with both. Near as I can tell, Navy Secretary John Phelan was fired by Defense Secretary Drunk Nazi Pete for two reasons: new ships, including something called "Trump-class battleships"—a term that conjures up images of huge, ostentatiously gold-leafed boats made on the cheap falling part and catching fire in the open sea when trying to gun down small fishing boats captained by brown people—weren't being built fast enough for his taste; and Phelan wouldn't defy a court ruling prohibiting the DOD from prosecuting Sen. Mark Kelly (retired Navy Captain) for making a video citing the requirement of soldiers and officers to obey the law even if ordered not to. NOT because, as someone appointed to the job with zero experience with or knowledge of the Navy, he wasn't competent to oversee things like shipbuilding or blockades, nor because he was an associate of rapist and sex-trafficker Jeffrey Epstein (that last part is possibly what got him the gig in the first place, after all). Just the latest in the line of officials fired or made to resign from the regime for the wrong reasons. We're all glad Pam Bondi and Kristi Noem and now-ex-Labor Secretary Chavez-DeRemer are out, they were completely unqualified and inappropriate nominations that should never have been confirmed in the first place, but they're not gone because of the horrible things they did or the outrageous way they conducted themselves on the job, they're gone because they weren't cruel enough for Felon47’s standard and/or were embarrassing to him. Then there are the other military folks who were cashiered for bad/no reasons, like they had too much melanin or too many ovaries. Not to mention all the federal workers fired because Elon Musk and his brigade of incompetent tech children were allowed to torch and pillage any agency they could lay hands on. This regime can't come to an end fast enough—it's unconscionable that it's been allowed to go on as long as it has.
• Seems like I had something else in mind when I started this post, but it eludes me now so I'll stop here. More for later, I guess.