Last time I went to a baseball game Oscar Mayer Smokie Links were 35¢ each and Cokes were a quarter.

When it rains around here it really POURS ... and I’m not talking about the four-hour line of intense thunderstorms that blasted through here last night. (In case you’re interested, no, we did NOT get any basketball-size hail.) Actually, I’m referring to REMODELING PROJECTS here at Howdygram headquarters. While we’re still waiting for our second estimate for kitchen cabinet refacing — a project that will probably cost about $8,500 with all the cool extra doo-dads we decided to throw in — I realized last night that the shower in our master bathroom is having leak and grout issues again.

If you’ve been reading the Howdygram for a while you might recall our never-ending nightmare last year with Clayton and the grout people [see previous posts], a crew of pitifully unskilled and functionally illiterate “grout specialists” who spent FOUR EXCRUCIATING MONTHS grouting, caulking, demolishing and rebuilding the shower in our master bath — ELEVEN TIMES ALTOGETHER — to try and remediate a water leak in our marble sit-down bench. A $575 regrouting project eventually cost us $2,500 ... and now it looks like we’ll have to start over because the grout under the bench is turning brown again and the caulk is peeling off. This time, however, we’ll get estimates from real bathroom remodeling companies — NOT STINKING GROUT PEOPLE — for a completely new shower enclosure with some fancy-ass features for senior citizens. I’m particularly impressed by two excellent and highly-reviewed companies I researched online: ReBath of Dallas and New Bath Technologies.

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Is there anything wonderful on your Saturday agenda? It’s not quite 8 a.m. here and Sam is getting ready for a quick excursion to his favorite doughnut dealer and a stop at McDonald’s for a couple of Sausage Biscuits with Egg for yours truly plus a bag of hash browns. I’M TOTALLY STARVING. When I woke up at 5 a.m. my blood sugar was very low (only 56) and I’ve been waiting patiently for food for the last three hours. I’m a good person. I DESERVE SAUSAGE BISCUITS AND YOU CAN’T STOP ME.

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Next month Tammy and Josh — Sam’s sister and nephew — will be visiting Howdygram headquarters for a couple of days at the start of their big Texas road trip, and to help launch the festivities Sam will take them to the Texas Rangers baseball game on May 17. After doing some brief research this morning about the park’s concessions I realize how hopelessly out-of-touch I am with modern baseball food, because the last time I went to a game was 1969 at Wrigley Field in Chicago — GO CUBS! — when Oscar Mayer Smokie Links were 35¢ each and Cokes were a quarter. Life is very, very different now.

Aside from the two rather confusing entrees pictured above — why would anybody wreck a perfectly good ear of corn with BATTER? — the Rangers also offer fried Twinkies ($7), a fried chicken breast on a stick ($7), brisket mac and cheese balls ($10), a BLT on a bun ($10), bacon quesadillas ($8), a bacon and corn sauté ($8), bacon mac and cheese ($8), bacon-wrapped napkins ($5), bacon cotton candy ($4) and a free emergency referral to the ballpark’s official cardiologist.

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And now it’s time for my first nap of the day! Try to keep the noise to a minimum, okay?