This has been one of those glorious falls Saturdays where I’ve been able to carve out a little time and read a few things that I’ve put aside.

The dog is doing what she does best — sleep; my wife’s off to a baby shower with my mother (yeah, I’m gonna be a grandfather for the first time, my dad’s going to be a great grandfather for the first time, and that’s a little surreal to think about) and I’m sort of watching the Army-Air Force game because Larry Dixon’s running the ball for the Black Knights.

I’m sure your interests aren’t the same as mine, but I’m gonna share what I’ve been reading anyway.

I never knew much about the late Steve Jobs, and I was anxious to read Rolling Stone’s piece by Jeff Goodell on the man who gave us Apple and so much more. “Life is something that happens in a flash,” Jobs told Goodell. “We just have a brief moment her, and then we are gone.”

We’ve had a couple discussions in the office about what kind of money Albert Pujols is going to make on his next contract, and we’ve speculated …

(Let me interrupt this post to announce that Larry Dixon just scored on a 13-yard TD run to give Army a 7-0 lead)

on where Sir Albert might land. Whatever he signs for — and it’s been suggested he could get between $220 and $270 million over six or seven years — will be too much. Nobody’s worth that kind of money, and those big deals always seem to come back to haunt the franchise’s that get duped into shelling out the mad money. Joe Posnanski breaks down some of the big-money deals that have been signed in recent years. The Twins owe Joe Mauer $161 million over the next seven years. Posnanski points out that Mauer played in 82 games this year and has hit 12 home runs the last two years.

For my money, Mike Silver, formerly of Sports Illustrated and now Yahoo! Sports, is the best NFL writer around. I’m not a big NFL guy, but I find Silver’s rants and opinion to be pretty much right on. His latest column is about the Browns’ Peyton Hillis, who has become a major distraction for the franchise run by Mike Holmgren. In his weekly rankings column, he writes about the Lions’ nasty attitude and he wrote this to say about the No. 26-ranked Seahawks: “When Pete Carroll gets “hormonal” do Seahawks fans reach for the Midol?”

Ken Goe of The Oregonian writes that Ducks’ coach Chip Kelly is downplaying the significance of tonight’s rivalry game between Oregon and Washington.

“There is a visceral dislike here for the UW football program that dates for some to 1948, when California and Oregon tied for the conference title and Washington’s vote for Cal sent the Bears to the Rose Bowl,” Goe writes. 

I think was on my third, maybe fourth, cup of coffee when I got to Uncle Sam’s Backyard. The blog is written by my pal and former Sun staffer John Wallingford,and I was looking forward to catching up on his ramblings. He’s back in Pennsylvania now, traveling home with his wife, Becky, and son, Max, and feline companion, Lester. Wally’s written about some interesting people and places they came across on their cross-country trip. His latest post is about a nuclear plant that’s located close to where his mother and sister live. It’s always good catching up on where he’s been and what he’s doing. If you’re looking for comments on the world of sports, don’t bother. But if you want to be entertained, provoked, educated, well, you’ll probably enjoy this blog. (Warning: some of the effin language might turn some of you off).

Here’s samples of what you’ll come across:

What does it all mean? Is there anything close to a thread that ties this ramshackle narrative together?
We’re here on the road, like so many before, trying to make sense of the American experience. Where’s Ken Burns when you need him?
Into the second decade of the 21st century, you have to wonder if we’re approaching the end of the road-trip era. Should the world’s oil supplies peak and produce Mad Max-style chaos, nobody will be wandering the highways and back roads, especially at the obscene rate of 13 miles per gallon.
It’s hard to see the end from here, though, the way the great army of semis maraud across the country night and day, making 1,000 miles per every 200-gallon tank of diesel. You’d think we were living in the 1950s, when domestic oil supplies seemed bottomless and everyone in Oklahoma City had an oil well in their backyard. 

*** ***

With Becky and Max asleep, I raise the blinds and drive out of Norman in the direction of Oklahoma City. First up is Moore, a ghastly piece of sprawl that gave the world Toby Keith. Enough said.

*** ***

The gravitational mystery that attracts me to eccentrics, cranks, lunatics and out-and-out freaks has reached full flower.

Characters are falling in upon me so fast I can’t keep up with them. They’re everywhere. They’re talking with God in ancient languages, getting stabbed in the heart by God, riding in upon beaten tricycles like tarnished gods in surreal wastelands.

And then there’s Nelson, whom I met this afternoon at Smith’s grocery store in Kingman, (Arizona) after shelling out roughly $1,150 for six tires and an oil change.

Nelson: Corpulent slob in motorized cart who thinks Rush Limbaugh is God. He didn’t tell me this, it’s just an educated guess.

Nelson accosted me near the seafood counter, apparently seeing in me a kindred spirit. He leaned in with a conspiratorial nod and offered the following gem.

Well, nevermind, I’ll let him tell you. I was so inspired by his eager buffoonery that I ran right outside and grabbed my camera, tracked him down in the soda aisle and told him I had some friends in Washington and Pennyslvania who’d love to hear him tell his joke.

You’ll have to go hear for the joke and to see the picture of Nelson.

The Army-Air Force game just kicked off fullback Larry Dixon, a freshman from Olympic High, started for Army. He picked up five yards on his first carry. The game’s on CBS. Dixon, West Sound’s all-time leading rusher, entered the game with 340 yards rushing. Army’s the No. 1 rushing team in the country.

Willie Bloomquist and the Arizona Diamondbacks seemed like a good fit. Arizona picked up the its half of the mutal option on Bloomquist, but the Port Orchard native declined his option and opted for free agency.

Bloomquist, who wound up being the starting shortstop for the Diamondbacks for most of the last three months of the regular season and in the postseason, is now in limbo. McDonald signed a two-year, $3 million deal. He’s a middle infielder, primarily a shortstop. Stephen Drew, Arizona’s starting shortstop, is recovering from ankle surgery.

“We really haven’t had any dialogue since they declined,” GM Kevin Towers said, referring to Bloomquist and his representative, Scott Boras. “We’d still like to have Willie back, we just seemed to have more dialogue with Johnny Mac and his advisers over the last few days. I think for us based on the holes we had in the middle of the infield we wanted to act quickly versus sitting around and waiting for the market to kind of open up and find out where guys are at and where dollars are at on guys. I get the impression from Willie’s side that that was what they wanted to do.”

Coming on the heels of her being named the state player of the year by the Washington State Golf Association for the third time in four years, Silverdale’s Erynne Lee was named Women’s Player of the Year by the Pacific Northwest Golf Association on Tuesday. It’s the second time Lee, a Central Kitsap grad now playing her first year of college golf at UCLA, has won the award. She’s was also a two-time WSGA junior player of the year and a former PNGA junior of the year.
Lee, 18, won the Washington State Women’s Amateur by defeating her sister Katie Lee by two strokes with a 54-hole total of 3-under par, 213.  A few weeks later, Lee reached the quarterfinals of the  U.S. Women’s Amateur at the Rhode Island Country Club. Lee also played in the U.S. Women’s Open, won the Washington State Class 4A championship and played in Canadian Women’s Tour events at Beloeil, Blue Springs and Squamish Valley.

Lee tied for 8th, tied for 25th and finished 5th in her first three college tournaments for No. 1 ranked UCLA. She has 72.0 stroke average after nine rounds. Lee is not playing in this week’s tournament in Hawaii.

In a column in last week’s Sports Paper Weekly, a Sun publication that publishes on Thursdays, Kitsap Golf & Country Club pro Al Patterson ranked Lee as the best player to come out of the area.

“Please remember,” Patterson wrote, “that Erynne is only 18 years old, but as of today she is the 40th ranked women’s amateur in the world. In 2008 she finished the year ranked 18th in the same category. She really is one of the future stars in women’s golf.”

Here’s Patterson’s top 5: 1, Lee; 2, Troy Kelly, the Central Kitsap grad and ex-Husky who just secured his PGA Tour card for 2012 by finishing No. 11 on the Nationwide Tour money list; 3, George Bayer, the former Bremerton bomber who grew up near the KG&CC. Bayer didn’t turn pro until he was 29 and won four PGA Tour events during his career; 4, Scott Alexander, the director of golf at Gold Mountain; Alexander’s a former Washington State Amateur champion and top collegian golfer during his days at Seattle U; 5, Buzz Edmonds, “the best golfer in Kitsap Golf and Country Club history,” according to Patterson. Hard to argue. Buzz won the Kitsap Amateur three times and was a club champ nine times, winning it in five different decades.

What do you think about Patterson’s list? Who else belongs on it? Randy Jensen, the long-time pro at LakeLand Village, was one of the best in the Northwest for years; Connor Robbins played at Washington,  reached the quarterfinals of the U.S. Amateur and had some success on golf’s mini tours; Ryan Kelly, Troy’s brother, could be dominant at times. If you wanted to expand the list to West Sound, you’d have to put Mark Wurtz on the list. The former Chimacum High star, who returned last summer to become the pro at Discovery Bay Golf Course in Port Towsned, won over 40 junior titles, two state high school titles and was second another year. He won over $100,000 on the PGA Tour in 1994.