Random Notes from a Crank

As I was driving home after picking up the kids the other day, I noticed a house for sale sign that I had never seen before. Often when realtors put their signs on the front lawns around here, marking their marketing territory, they'll often place an additional sign at the top that provides a positive feature of the property, such as "basement," "sunroom," and "family room." This house, however, offered this enticement: "investment." From the looks of the home, that word needs an adjective before it, such as "long-term" or "bad."

Wednesday night the Alabama softball team won the World Series. That's the Capstone's first National Championship in softball, and the Crimson Tide's win is the first time an SEC team has won the national championship in softball. It's been a great year for Crimson Tide athletics. The football team demolished LSU in the BCS national championship. The ladies gymnastics team won its sixth national championship. The ladies golf team won a national championship. Unfortunately, the men's golf team got second after losing to Texas on the last hole of match play. But now softball got theirs. Roll Tide.

I stumbled across the fact that we have the Documentary Channel via DirectTV. I've already watched documentaries on Levon Helm, Yogi Berra, and The Secret to a Happy Ending, the 2009 documentary about the Drive-By Truckers. And I have five or six taped in my DVR queue. Hello Documentary Channel -- Goodbye productivity.

My neighbor told me this morning that she scared two raccoons out of her year at about 4:30 a.m. One, she said, was quite big. We've had opossums in the neighborhood before, but this is the first incident with raccoons I know of. Those critters are smart and everywhere as evidenced by the Raccoon Nation documentary my son and I watched a while back. The Nature documentary tracked the movements of urban raccoons in Toronto and observed their behavior, tactics, and strategies. Impressive mammals.