Monday and Tuesday it felt like Spring, finally, temps were in the mid teens. Today and Thursday, we are expected to get up to 30cm of snow.

Spring takes a LONG time to spring in Calgary and Alberta in general.  Winter, on the other hand arrives early, often by mid October and sometimes earlier.

Baseball season, minor baseball that is, is right around the corner. I’m looking forward to getting back on the field to umpire.

I’ll be umpiring, primarily for Babe Ruth Calgary but I’ve also decided I’ll do some games for Baseball Alberta and perhaps High River as well, although High River is about an hour away. I live in North Calgary, about as far north in Calgary as I can go and High River is about an hour south, so, I am unsure how many games I’ll do down there.

Regardless of where I umpire, I’m looking forward to getting back on the field. Spring will eventually arrive, typically any time now, about a month or so after the calendar arrival. After the snow melts, the diamonds will dry up fairly quickly as it tends to be windy and the City will get the diamonds to shape.

I need to check my equipment to ensure everything is good to go. I think I need a new mask this season, I’ve had mine for about 6 years or so and it’s seen better days. I wear a catcher style umpire mask and they aren’t cheap, around $400. I don’t umpire to make money, but I don’t want to lose money either.

I plan on umpiring 4 or 5 games a week I’m thinking, maybe 3-4 games on the weekend and 1-2 games during the week. That’ll keep me out of trouble. That may change if I go back to 12 hour shifts, but it looks like I’ll be on a Monday through Friday “9-5” type shift moving forward.

So, I’m hoping the weather forecast for today and tomorrow is exaggerated and we don’t get the dumping of snow they are calling for, but, I guess we can use the precipitation.

Spring will arrive eventually, it always does…