Barb’s Burblings

So today’s the 70th anniversary of the beginning of World War II, the invasion of Poland. That seems like an insanely long time, doesn’t it? I’ve been following a blog done by the Orwell Prize, which is run by by the Media Standards Trust, the Orwell Trust and Political Quarterly, posting the diaries of George Orwell. It started about a year ago and will go, presumably, until 2012, when Orwell’s diary ends. For a long, long time it was just him wandering around and had a lot about eggs. Seriously. A lot. But lately it’s gotten more interesting as he chronicles the political maneuverings that led to World War II. They’re also including newspaper images from those days. The beginning of today’s entry?

Invasion of Poland began this morning. Warsaw bombed. General mobilization proclaimed in England, ditto in France plus martial law.

It’s just kind of neat to see a firsthand account of it. Also, fewer mentions of eggs.

In other news, September 1 means September callups for baseball. Huzzah! Jeff Fiorentino, a.k.a. Screech, was called up from AAA Norfolk and that made me happy. He’s been doing really well. He was first called up in the middle of 2005, which probably didn’t help (he was only 22, was called up from AA, and probably was just not ready, though he did OK then [.640 OPS] and in 2006 [.683 OPS] in very limited at-bats). Anyway, yay, Screech! I admit I’m partial to him, too, because he bats lefty, has super nice blue eyes, and I have a cute picture of him from photo day back in 2005:

Screech and me

He looks OK, but it’s actually a great picture of me. Yay! (I have one with Javy Lopez from that same day, and I look wretched.) Anyway, I went to a game at Bowie last year or the year before, and the players were signing autographs before the game. I went up to Jeff and got his, and said that I was bummed I didn’t realize it was autograph day, because I had this great picture of the two of us, and bless his heart, he looked bummed and was like, “Man, that does suck!” Aww, Jeff.

(In mixed news, it looks like he actually may get a decent amount of playing time, due to Adam Jones spraining his ankle in tonight’s game. Good things never happen to Orioles in September games against the Yankees.)