not a good way to start the morning, if you ask me.

I've always tried to live by the rule...never start the morning with a loud bang in the kitchen. It usually leads to disaster. And today is no exception to that rule!

Upon entering the kitchen this morning, I started my normal routine...making the fuel for the morning (coffee). After getting the water ready, I opened the cabinet to get out the coffee can when...BANG!...a small jar of jelly jumped right out of the cabinet, presumably in a suicidal rage. Unfortunately for the jar of jelly, it didn't succeed in its plan (all jelly is fine and its home--the jar--has been inspected and deemed inhabitable). However, the surface on which the jelly attempted to end its life...my range cooktop...didn't make it.

As you can see (beside the fact that the camera's date was set to over 2 years in the past), said suicidal jar of jelly created a huge crack in my cooktop, hence rendering it useless. Ouch. Wanna guess what I'm doing today? Oy. I guess the bright side is that the stove is indeed over 10 years old, so it was probably going to need replacement at some point in the near future--those ceramic cooktops don't last forever, from what I'm told. It's just a drag, really (and a few hundred bucks to replace the stove).

And this after a nice night up at Roll-A-Way last night, rolling a 313 on short notice as a substitute. Geez, guess I used up all my good luck last night! Unfortuantely, it sounded like my pals on 3 & 4 didn't have much good luck as they were quite unhappy--and left quickly. Hey, we all have those nights...and I've learned how to deal with them. Let go, move on...Let go, move on...Let go, move on...Let go, move on...

Oh well, we put the accident behind us as we really couldn't help it. The end result, after all the "Oh my Gods" are through is simple...we have to buy a new stove--fast. There's worse things that could happen; it's really more of an inconvenience than anything. But what have we learned here (besides "save the jelly, save the stove")?

We've learned that one cannot spend his life worrying or fretting about things that one cannot change. This notion spills over to the candlepin community, too. All too often we see where groups of bowlers (or individuals, for that matter) get upset at other groups of bowlers (or individuals) for seemingly trivial reasons. And once those groups or individuals "get it going," the wars tend to escalate to some lofty heights...for no reason.

The issue this morning could have resulted in Kathleen getting really upset with me, yelling and being angry...but it didn't. Why? Very simple--she and I are level headed and able to discern which things that happen in life are trivial and which are serious. This issue (the stove) is trivial. The candlepin community, in some cases, needs to be able to do that. I hear stories from the old days about how "this fella" is upset with "this other fella" for whatever reason...and the sides never made up (let alone the two individuals relatives, kids, etc.). It's sad. I've always said that if I could paint the words "let go, move on" on the wall of every classroom in America, we might have a better chance at furthering society with the next generation. I think we should do that in bowling alleys, too.