A Few of My Favorite Things: My Toronto Blue Jays Mug

I had a twelve hour clinical shift today. I've adapted to the twelve hour days pretty well-- that's the kind of shift I'll be working in nursing, in all likelihood-- but I had to work last night, so ended up getting less than four hours of sleep. This is my last long clinical of the semester, indeed of nursing school. Life goes on.

I'd been promising (or threatening) a new feature, "A Few Of My Favorite Things." I haven't been blogging nearly enough, and since I crashed for a couple of hours after coming home from clinicals and having dinner, I've got a little energy to blog.

With full time school, full time work and parenting two teenagers, coffee has become the elixir of life to me. I tend to drink coffee in the late afternoon and early evening to extend a day that by then has become long, and frequently after a nap. I acquired the treasured Toronto Blue Jays cup through a job. Larry T. a guy I have worked for on and off over the years is one of the more remarkable people I've ever known. I first worked for him in the late eighties in a deli he co-owned. I continued to work for him at a barbecue joint he owned.

Larry, an African-American guy from the south side of Chicago, is intelligent, funny and gregarious. On a trip to Toronto, a city he loves as much as I do, he met a couple of other restauranteurs, who sent him home with a bunch of little gifts, including a Toronto Blue Jays coffee cup-- the one pictured above.

The 1993 World Series, between the Philadelphia Phillies and the Toronto Blue Jays, was one of my favorites. One of my favorite-ever baseball players, Joe Carter, who had at one time played for my beloved Cubs, was the hero of that series, a moment I recounted in this post a couple of years ago. In fact, I was working at Larry's barbecue joint watching it on television.

The mug sat around the restaurant for ages before I realized that it was eventually just going to get broken or lost. I took it home to make sure it had a good home.

In my post about the Joe Carter World Series game, I recounted how at the time of that game, I was awaiting the birth of my son and an uncertain fate, and that how that moment was my favorite moment in a World Series until seeing that son pitch in a little league world series over a decade later. When I have a simple cup of coffee (always black, no sugar) from that cup, it's a reminder of my son, a reminder of my friend Larry, whom I'm still friends with, and a reminder of how great a game baseball can be.

Last week I got on Ebay to get one more thing to go along with the mug: a 1993 Joe Carter Toronto Blue Jays baseball card, which I will frame and put in a place of honor.