Car Talk

It was after 5:15 Monday afternoon before I remembered that I needed to pay for my car repair before 6 pm. Barely made it. Will went to the Normans, so I washed his work clothes and watched 24. Ate an old frozen mini pizza out of the freezer, along with frozen French fries. Trying to clean out the fridge/freezer. There's plenty more to eat. Packed an EBay shipment and took it to the post office after 24, when Will took me up to Roswell to get the car.

Saturday I got the oil changed, and Monday I had the transmission serviced – only because it's supposed to be serviced every 60,000 miles. My Civic's transmission hadn't been serviced in over 120,000 miles, and since I recently hit 200,000 miles I figured I'd better get it checked out. There's only so much they can do when servicing a transmission without completely taking it apart, but the guy said it appeared to be in decent shape.

But Tuesday night on my drive home I realized the check engine light – which had been on – was no longer lit. Before getting too excited I realized that all the servicing to the engine might've caused the light to re-set. It might take me driving a few hundred miles for the computer to run through all its checks before the light comes back on again. I'm probably jinxing it by just mentioning it. But if the light doesn't come back on, I don't have to take the car back for more repairs before getting my emissions checked. That would be good news.

Thursday Ceil's father had a heart cauterization, and learned he needs bypass surgery. It will be scheduled for the next week or two.  Matthew is jealously wanting to make sure nothing interferes with his big "anniversary" plans this weekend. Anna takes the SAT Saturday. All of which messes up my plans to attend Saturday night's Gwinnett Braves Mike Minor Bobblehead Night.

Guess you heard that Ricky Richardson's mother passed away. The funeral was Thursday.

Rob's fixes for the Braves:

1)  Move LaStella to leadoff and Heyward down to 5th in the order.  That would give Heyward some RBI opportunities and give him a chance to steal without risking taking the bat out of Freeman or J Uptons hands.

2)  Put and keep Chris Johnson in the 8th spot.  He is bound to get better, but he is having a wretched offensive season.

3)  Stop screwing around with Alex Wood and put him back in the rotation.

The organist shtick is kind of funny the first time through the lineup, then I am over it after that.  I don't think we need to hear "Rawhide" (Jimmy Rollins) or "Camptown Races ("Lucas Duda) 5 times per night.

Rob is so right about Camptown Races. Tuesday the organist also wore out "Dust in the Wind" for Dustin Ackley and "Puff the Magic Dragon" for Justin Smoak – a reach at best.

I was thinking about the lineup after reading Mark Bradley's column. Some of the suggestions and comments on the AJC were some of the dumbest ever. I agree – lead off LaStella. Hardly anyone had suggested that on AJC.com. Move Heyward down so you don't have all three lefties at the top of the order. There has been talk of hitting your best player second. Freeman isn't a prototypical second place hitter, but perhaps Justin Upton could. Is Fredi so concerned about spacing out the lefties that he doesn't want 3 or 4 righties in a row at the bottom of the order?

Rob: Fredi is pretty set on not wanting back to back (especially back to back to back) LH hitters.  He does not care about the RH being bunched up so much as he does not want to give the other team the chance to use 1 LOOGY to face multiple LH hitters in a row.  Philly was fine for years with Howard and Utley.