Oh, and I think I made the grade in umpiring girl's softball.

It's been a tad different--I've umpired adult softball and youth baseball. Never did girls before. It's kind of rough in that some of the batters are about three feet tall, which means the strike zone can be a bit funky, and honestly, I don't like calling 7-year old girls out. Even had a coach come up to me the other day who said "I can tell you hate calling them 'out'".

Yeah, I do.

I prefer to call the older girls--what they call the Junior League. They're 14-15 or so, so they can deal with it when I call them out. Today I called a Ponytail League game, which I'm not supposed to do since my daughter is in that league, but it went well (and I'm not going to throw a freaking softball game just because my daughter plays).

Anyway, I'm calling my last game of the day and I hear someone heckling me from the stands. Normally it's the sort of thing that you just shut off, but the voice was familar. Turns out it was the senior umpire in the league.

I think that's a sign that I made the grade.