My MiL started an IM conversation with me while I was at work to mention that if we had any problems, it might have been similar to my FiL's "issues". Talk about a conversation I was never meant to have. EVER. Poking my eyes out at work wasn't an option.

How funny would it have been to ask "Oh, [FiL's] issues involved not wanting children in order to spite all the relatives over their intrusive hints and comments on the subject?"

My co-worker's on the phone talking about how he's "clean now."

I'm admittedly draconian about avoiding personal calls at work, and I refuse to talk about my actual life during the calls I take. This guy? Addictions (past), relationships (future) and just everything is fair game.

Don't wanna know!

Is there a slaughter rule in regular baseball?

No, and that is why there is such a thing as a "laugher" -- it is such an unevenly-won game that you have to laugh: 22-0, or 17-1. Not that either of these has happened (one of them twice) to the Yankees in the last calendar year.

I have not yet figured out what the losing side of a laugher is called (I mean, besides massacre). "Crier" doesn't have the same connotation, you know?

I suppose it is possible to literally have no more players and have to give up. In that case, though, the game would either be called (if both teams were in the same boat) or the giving-up team would forfeit. But baseball is the game where two teams once played a 33-inning game. 32 of those innings were in a single night, and when they called the game on account of it was 4 in the morning, they scheduled a time weeks later for the resumption of play.

Ugh. At least my two co-workers with whom I can't finish a short conversation without being interrupted by a cell phone call only talk about vague, bland life details rather than Things I'd Prefer Not to Know.

I remember slaughter rules in Little League baseball. Yeah, it's basically to keep the losers' feelings from being hurt more than they had to be.

Isn't there anybody else who could have filled in?

At minimum, somebody who could say, "I've never done it before, but I'll at least try."

I have over the years acquired various carvings that turn out are also fertility whosits. (I have a shona version of the Ghanaian fertility figure .) It sometimes give me pause, but really, it's the design that gets me. And besides, fertility/trickster gods are usually pretty funky or strange. Goats, beetles, random humpbacks.

I suppose it is possible to literally have no more players and have to give up.

The 2003 All-Star Game, for example.

Soccer, basketball, and hockey all allow a team to play with fewer players than the limit. Players who get thrown out of soccer games may not be replaced.

I suppose it is possible to literally have no more players and have to give up.

Possible in theory. A few years ago, there was a Clemson-UNC basketball game in which so many Clemson players were called for so many fouls that Clemson only had four players on the floor for the last few minutes -- everybody else had fouled out.

The insulting part was, Clemson outscored UNC during those last few minutes. Give up a 2-point shot, then make a 3-point shot. (Luckily, UNC was so far ahead that the outcome wasn't really in doubt.)

It's weird. I'm not married. I never thought I would marry. No one in my family has ever said a word to me that they indicated that they expected me to be married and/or have kids. I am 32.

Now it may be that there are only 7 people in my family, including the aunts, uncles and cousins. it may be that no one in my family's has been happily or sucessfully married except one uncle, for the second time, for only 4 years so far. It may be that we are all very quiet and in fact spend family gatherings staring at each other silently.

It is the cow-orkers who wonder why I am not in a relationship/want to fix me up/tell me I will want babies who drive me craxy. Even if some of the comments were true, I don't feel that close with my cow-orkers to have them comment

There's no slaughter rule in college football. It is considered in bad taste to start running up the score, but there's no rule against. Some teams will just start putting in their second and third string players once the score is so high.