Exhibit 20.26

To-Do List for Wednesday, August 12th

1. Fill bucket with tears
2. Take bucket to the Salvation Army with the drop-off boxes instead of the Goodwill to avoid long conversation about bucket's poor sales potential
3. Feel bad about bucket's poor sales potential
4. Remember I still need a bucket
5. Buy different bucket at Salvation Army because Goodwill has sold out of buckets
6. Fill bucket with water, soap, remaining tears
7. Wonder if I should do something with remaining eggs or if they should just be thrown away
8. Feel bad about eggs/bucket/Nora Ephron's neck
9. Re-recycle twice recycled blog post idea
10. Spend all day inexplicably listening to Neil Diamond over coworker's iTunes
11. Die a little instead of sleep
12. Eat 18 different goodbye meals, none of which I can manage to make take place at McDonald's
13. Again promise to quit blog after move
14. Start re-watching Lost Season One for some reason
15. Lust after two apple pies for $1
16. Kill spider bigger than my fist
17. Look at email inbox and laugh
18. Begin composing email to spider's family
19. Decide this is crazy as spider seems to have come back to life
20. Don't go in bedroom anymore
21. Make 9-egg bucket omelette

Exhibit 2.23

This is what it's like to be a Royals fan.

From today's Kansas City Star:

“[Last year] the Royals were set to receive outfielder Melky Cabrera in return. The deal was all but done until a strained thigh sidelined Sanders just before the trading deadline.”

Oh, Reggie Sanders. Go ahead and break my heart again.

I mean, I know Melky Cabrera may not be any great shakes yet, but he's only 23 and his season this year is positively David DeJesus-like. As opposed to Sanders, whose season this year was positively David Madden-like. Literally, I think Dave played in more baseball games this summer than Reggie Sanders. And even if Dave played in none, the most Reggie could beat him by is 24.

The thing is, things like this happen to the Royals all of the time. There are always these painful rumors/facts that wait like snakes in the middle of the most innocuous article or early-inning banter. Sometimes Paul Splitorff will just say something like, "Of course, we all know the Royals were set to take Kansas City-native Albert Pujols in the 14th round of that draft. Boy, he's worked out for the Cardinals." Or in the second to last paragraph of a game wrapup in the Star there will be a line like, "Sweeney, who hasn't played in a game since early May, was signed to a 5 year $55 million deal when the Royals decided against trading him to the Angels for John Lackey and using the money to lock up Carlos Beltran long term."

(Ed note: none of those things actually have come out. Yet.)

It's not a curse or anything. It's just the combination of desperation by a small market team that needs perfection to succeed, the frustration that sets in when that inevitably doesn't happen due to tight purse strings and shoddy management, and hope for the future that hinges on the gratitude of a team like the Yankees deciding they can't have anyone on their team who hits less than 15 home runs.

I don't even get sad anymore.