Back when we had our community-wide garage sale at our complex, they gave away ‘door prizes’ to anyone who signed up to sell.  So in addition to selling our spare PS2, some games, and some CDs, we also got a pair of very nice Aces tickets.  So on a beautiful Saturday evening, we headed out to the old ballgame.

As you could see, our seats were quite good.  That large concrete thing?  Oh yeah, that’s the dugout.  We were first row just to the first side base of the plate.  I gotta thank the powers that be for that one.

The game starts with the visitors, the Rainers (Mariners’ AAA team) scoring four in the top of the first.  But not without some commotion.  After two quick outs, the pitcher gives up a screamer down the first base line.  The ump signals towards the fans (foul) and the play gets confusing.  The runner slows down, but seeing the ump turn around to follow the ball and seeing the right fielder scrambling to get it, turns on the juice and goes to third.  Everyone is confused.  The Aces coach Brett Butler comes out and I can see him mouth (and gesture) “This (signalling towards the fans) means foul.”  Anyway, he came around to score as did three other guys.

But in the next two innings, the Aces scored six, mostly due to my new favorite minor leaguer, Trent Oeltjen, who went 3-5 and was a double short of the cycle.  Dirty-sounding Rusty Ryal also had a good showing.  The action on the field more or less calmed down after that, with the pitchers finally showing up.

But in the stands, the crowd was HOT.  It was the fourth-largest crowd, and there were some characters.  An older woman behind us who was lusting after a Rainers’ player, a young couple behind us celebrating his birthday, and most notably, a group of eight guys in sportscoats and sunglasses at a bachelor party.  The bachelor had a baby doll in a carrier “for practice.”  They were a ton of fun and started many memorable chants.  By the end of the game, they just started screaming “BUNT!” at every Rainers player.

There was a “wave guy” who, God love him, tried his best to get the wave going.  He stood right by our section and guided everyone into doing the wave.  CLose by, everyone was into it but it petered out.  Then the bachelor group kept trying to get his attention to “get that man a sportscoat!” and I briefly tried to get a “SPORTS COAT!” chant started. A number of people came by, tried on a sportscoat and glasses and got their picture taken (including a young kid.)  Good times.

During innings, they do lots of schtick to entertain the crowd, including tricycle races.  The woman MC saw the dude with the baby and picked him.  He ended up beating his buddy and the mascot in a thrilling race.

Oh, and the Aces ended up winning 6-5.  Would DEFINITELY go again.  If nothing else, I’d go to see the gigantic singing baseball head.

Here are two pics I have just fallen in love with.

It looks as though Fats has posted a long-awaited column.

And by long-awaited, I mean I’ve waited a long time to get anyone to write me questions.

I made a “how well do you know me quiz”  Go take it HERE.

And before everyone starts putting pictures on my wall or mafiaing my apps, or whatever the hell people do on Facebook, I don’t plan on making this something I regularly check out.  I have waaaaaaaaaaaay too much stuff to check out as it is.  But now you can all hush up because my face got booked.

> Having a child is great.  Seeing him smile, hearing him laugh, watching him progress and cross milestones almost daily – it’s all just as great as you read about in magazines that you probably would be ashamed to admit you read.  However, seeing your child sick?  Blows.  Landen’s been sick for a few days now, and he’s sleeping and eating poorly and just generally unhappy.  He doesn’t like the medicine (even though it’s amoxicillan, probably the “best” medicine out there in terms of taste.)  His eye is very puffy this morning (allergy?  just tired from rubbing it?) and he looks miserable.  What’s even worse is that he’s TRYING HIS BEST to smile and remain happy.  He just doesn’t like crying or being unhappy.  It sounds simple to say, but some babies relish in crying.  Not Landen.  He loves smiling and laughing.  And it’s so hard for him to do so now.  And that just sucks to watch.

> I genuinely enjoyed getting messages and texts on Father’s Day.  That’s something I never would have expected.

> Usually by the time the days start getting shorter, I’d been playing alot of disc golf, probably the most of the summer.  Often times, I’d upped my playing to twice a week by that point and it start to taper down right around now. This year, I’ve hardly played at all.  If I taper, that means I’m limiting my playing to some practice putting once a month.  Grrr.

> We got free tickets to the Reno Aces game on Friday (the AAA affiliate of the Diamondbacks).  The seats are 7th row seats.  SWEET!  So I started doing some research into the players so I can properly root for them.  Chad Tracy and Ruben Gotay are the only two I’ve heard of (Tracy’s doing rehab and Gotay was a major league scrub.)  But the more I started researching, the dirtier and dirtier the names started getting.  These are actual players names: Abe Woody, Jon Coutlangus, Billy Spottiswood, and perhaps my favorite, Rusty Ryal, which sounds like something that you should only do with a fire department on call.

> For those that heard little snippets, my sister is doing much better and has been sent home from the hospital.  What she was diagnosed with is something that happens to roughly 1 in a million people.  Our family is lucky.

> We drank an awful lot of milk growing up.  It supposedly promotes strong bones.  I think that is readily obvious when you look at the picture in yesterday’s post of my toe being black, blue, and red, and still not being broken.  It feels better today, so that’s reassuring.  I probably shouldn’t have played 40 holes on it after first injuring it, huh?

> Yahoo IM doesn’t seem to work anymore.

> To answer some people’s questions, no I will not join Twitter (if I did, I would only do Meta-Twitter posts like “I am posting on Twitter” or “Made you look”).  Many have asked about Facebook – I do have a Facebook account set up in a fake name.  Right now there is absolutely nothing on it and I don’t plan on ever checking it.  In fact, Ash set it up and I don’t even know the password.  I’m setting it up so I can make a “How Well Do You KNow Me” test.  That’s pretty much it.

> Like Mom, like Son.

I’m gonna try to make this brief (yeah, right).  Sax Mike was in town for King of the Lake, the best Tahoe tournament and one of my favorite tourneys in general.  4 rounds at 4 different courses.  Last year, I shot a 239 total, which put me in a tie for 3rd, and I lost the sweet trophy in a playoff.  How did I do this year?

Round 1 – Bijou.  This was my best course last year, and of course, I start with a dud.  I only threw 2 birdies on a course where there were probably 15 to be had (27 holes).  My putting was SO CLOSE all round, but I missed about 8 putts within the circle (only one airball). My ups also cost me some strokes.  Good driving.  After 1 round, I was 9 off the leader and 5 from DFL, in 19th place.

Round 2 – Zephyr – Lasy year’s worst round turned out to one of my best.  I missed a 12′ putt on my third hole and thought “oh, so it’s going to continue huh?”  And then I parked 3 of the next 4 holes within 2′.  I guess if you don’t have to putt, you can’t miss them.  Shot very solid.  -4.  There was only one better round than me the entire day (a -6).  That has the possibility of being a 1000 rated round (my sixth ever, if it is.)

After day 1, I was in a tie for 12th, right on the bubble.  Day 2, I start out practicing at Truckee when THIS happens.  (Warning: it’s pretty gnarly-looking)  I was wearing crocs and I stumbled on a rock.  Ugh.  This was about 10 mins before the players meeting.  At go time, it was in pain, but the toe was not discolored, just swollen.  I iced it and figured I’d tough it out.

Round 3: Truckee.  It was set up as total birdie-golf (17 of 18 are birdieable, and probably a good half dozen would be considered must-birds.)  I hate birdie golf traditionally, but not being able to run up properly, I did an awful lot of stand-and-deliver.  I shot very well, for some reason.  7 birdies, and bogey-free (only my second tournament round without a bogey ever.)  Like Zephyr, this was the 2nd best round of the tourney for this course (one guy shot a -8).  Another 1000-rating possibility here.  After three rounds, I was in a tie for 8th.  They would probably pay around top 12.  But would my foot hold out?

Round 4: Vista.  No, it wouldn’t.  I was in so much pain, my throws were all over the place, and I only hit one birdie.  I scraped together a +5, which was not at all good.  But considering I was limping badly and couldn’t plant my feet right (not to mention Vista is VERY rocky and mountainous), I can’t bitch too much.  Seeing how nasty my toe got later, I was pretty surprised I even finished the tourney.

I was in a tie for 14th, which was somehow last-cash.  They paid deep.  Good for me.  But considering I threw a total of 241 (only two strokes worse than last year), and I did half of it on one leg I’m pretty darn impressed.

Oh, and the toe isn’t broken.  Although I can’t fathom how that’s possible.  Must be all that milk I drunk growing up.  For those keeping score, I beat Sax Mike by 28 strokes.  Heh.

Up next?  R&R.  My foot is killing me.

Happy Father’s Day, Derek!

It’s been far too long, but I’m finally getting around to uploading some new stuff.  Now that we’ve moved the main computer into Landen’s bedroom for an office where I can close the door, we no longer have access to it after he goes to bed at night, around 7:30.  So that’s partially why we’ve been slow to get stuff going.  Anyway, here are some new baby pix.  That’s why you’re here.

Playing in his fancy bouncer

His weddingish outfit (sans tie)

He is a ball of energy lately.  He’s discovered the joy of rolling over.  It’s a joy to watch, but of course it’s beginning to make things like napping and diaper changing a challenge.  He doesn’t ever want to stay on his back.  Which is, of course, interesting, since he doesn’t seem to actually ENJOY being on his stomach.  I have found myself asking him a number of times “Why do you keep rolling over when you can’t stand the result!?”  But babies will be babies.  And he’ll be cute while doing it.

He’s starting to eat food.  I often question how much of it ends up in his stomach, unless it were to somehow pass through his chin to get there.  But when we noticed orange poop today, it made me realize that he must be eating those sweet potatoes after all.  And yes, yes, when you’re a parent, all you talk about is baby poo.

Here’s a video.  It’s not of poo, don’t worry.

Finally, we’re putting up a copy of the weddingish in its entirety.  You need to turn it up really loud, so you might only want to listen to it while you turn off your other computer sounds.  IMs could become outright deafening.

Feel free to head over to YouTube and go to “ashsparks” to see even more videos of cuteness.  We hope to upload even more in the coming days.

So it’s been over 90 maybe two days so far this year (both on the weekend of the weddingish, with the weddingish itself being the hottest day of the year, by far.)  Even more surprising, it’s rained or been cloudy pretty much every day for the last two weeks.  With all the snow, earthquakes, fires, and now rain and cold, I wonder what in the blue hell is going on with this desert town.

So we got our first professional shot from Jon.  It’s going to be a while before we get the others, but if this is any indication (and it was the ONLY “official” smiley posey photo taken, and it came out that good), I think we’ll all be happy.

And I don’t know that Jon ever got a picture of our rings – in fact I’m pretty sure he didn’t.  But I am very excited about these.

These are the Mobius Rings, designed and made by a small locally-owned company (for WA state at least) called Ostling & Brooks in Leavenworth, WA.  We drove up there to meet with them, and they were very gracious, talking with us for over two hours.  Additionally, we had mentioned that we’d also want bracelets too because I am not fond of rings and, without us officially asking for them, they sent along two beautiful chains when they shipped our rings.  Their entire catalog is great, and I highly encourage everyone to check them out.

I’m still looking through more weddingish pictures people are sending me (feel free to keep sending me good ones!) and I’ll try to post more soon.  I’ve been both lazy and busy.  Interesting combination, that…