The Big DumpTruck

I'm more than a little bummed the past couple of days. (What day is this? Saturday? Okay, that's good.) Thursday night at Junior's Little League game he hit a GRAND SLAM, the first in his life (hell, he hasn't even hit a home run before now) and I did not capture the moment on film. Or on computer chip. For the first time, I'm REALLY mad that my good video camera is broken and that I haven't been able to replace it. I mean, what if he never hits another grand slam? My parents weren't able to make the game and I won't be able to share the moment with them. And trust me, they've been to enough games where we've all had to say "good try" to him because prior to this year his mad baseball skillz were, well, lacking. He had none. He had a lot of heart and loved to play, but well, never quite pulled it off. He couldn't hit and he couldn't catch. But now, he hits everything and his glove is a baseball magnet. (In addition to the grand slam he also hit a double, for 5 RBIs on the night) I think you should all put him on your fantasy baseball watch list cause he's gonna rock the big leagues.
But I can't show it to you because I don't have a video camera. Grrrrr.

Labels: baseball, junior

Way to go, Buchholz. We'll try to give you a little room, and not be too harsh if you falter a bit in your next start, but we are looking forward to VERY GOOD THINGS from you. Okay?

I'll even forgive you for being called up so that there was no chance I would see you start at my first Pawsox game yesterday. (Holy crap, what a great place to see a game. Even though we got creamed by the Scranton Yankees. Even though our seats were in the middle of the row and the people on the ends didn't have a firm grasp on the art of letting people by.) Next year we will definitely grab more tickets earlier in the season. And I can't say that the fun of the day didn't have anything to do with the family we went with - thanks P, L, A and C for a lovely day!

Junior (and the other two boys) got the Pawsox team baseball cards, so we have the Buchholz card front and center today.

Labels: baseball, junior, Red_Sox

I told you we had good seats! Actually, when we got the tickets we assumed we were in the 6th and 7th rows. However, when we got there we realized the rows started with C, not A, so we were in the 4th and 5th rows.

So that was two Sundays in a row we went to Spinners games. What the heck am I going to do *this* Sunday, now that it's a habit?

In non-baseball chatter, anyone doing anything fun for the 4th? We're going to just roll out of bed late, fire up the laptops and the grill, and relax. I suppose if I were really awesome like Chuck (http://flickr.com/photos/plastereddragon/) I would have planned a day out taking photos, complete with maps, GPS and a field guide to small bugs and flowers. Maybe I'll just take more photos of my feet, as they are creepily very popular and got a lot of people into my photo stream. (My foot picture is actually of gumballs, with the feet used as a reference for the size of the container.) If I'm going to do that, I'm going to have to put a new coat or two of nail polish on my toes. Too bad I don't own white and blue, I could make little flags!

Labels: baseball, feet, holidays, photos, summer

We attended out 2nd Lowell Spinners game in as many weeks (actually, more like a week because they were both Sunday games) with great GREAT tickets right behind home plate. I mean, right behind home plate. I will post pictures later, but you brave souls not afraid to go look at my flickr account will see a couple of them now.

We ended up sitting next to 5 players from the opposing team, the Tri-City Valley Cats, a single A affiliate of the Houston Astros. They were all pitchers, and they were sitting in the stands next to us with clipboards and radar guns. They were SUPER NICE GUYS given that they were "the enemy" and I swear, if the one who talked to us the most will be my favorite ball player if he ever gets called up to the majors. Mr. Dump tells me that based on the fact that they were just drafted and are already in the single A Penn League team, they are fast tracking up. I will have to find out their names so I can set up Google Alerts to tell me if they are ever in the news.

My heart belongs to the Boston Red Sox, but it can't hurt to have a favorite National League team, right?

Labels: baseball, Red_Sox, weekend

Hi kids!

Just popping in with a quick one so you won't think I've fallen off the roof or anything. Up to my armpits in stuff to do, and BDT has suffered greatly. Let me just share with you then, that in the past couple of days I have gone to Canobie Lake Park, a baseball jamboree for a league we aren't in, our final playoff game, a Lowell Spinners game, in addition to doing laundry, mowing the lawn and grocery shopping.

I assume eventually we'll get into the "lazy" days of summer, but so far, no go.

Junior started camp today, so we have that routine to get used to. He's already left something behind; I wish we had set up some kind of pool on how many days in it would take for him to not bring all his stuff home. We also could have set a value as a tie-breaker. The item left behind, his water bottle that you put in the freezer overnight, was worth about $4. So, because I didn't have a pool set up, I can official say I won!! My prize? Finding something else to freeze to send with him tomorrow because it's going to be 95 flippin' degrees.

Labels: baseball, camp, summer, weather

We had baseball games on Saturday and Sunday this week. The difference between Saturday's sauna game (I thought I was going to pass out at one point - I can't imagine how the boys in their polyester uniforms and knee socks handled it as well as they did) and Sunday's wearing-three-layers in the drizzle game was staggering.

Interestingly, the IFO (because after a minute it was no longer a UFO) incident happened on Sunday, when it would have seemed more appropriate for the hot day.

We were standing, watching the game, when suddenly we saw a "balloon" take off from the neighborhood behind the ball fields. We quickly realized it wasn't a balloon, but more of a flying donut with strings or something hanging off of it. I decided (and others agreed) that it looked like a flying pool toy - our assumption being that someone had a helium tank and had filled up an inflatable pool ring with helium, turning it into a balloon.

What an odd site. I would have killed to have my camera. Or to be on hand when the thing finally landed somewhere and people have to figure out how they ended up with a pool ring on their roof.

Labels: baseball, summer, toys, weather

8:00am. That's early on a Saturday. Hell, it's early on a Tuesday. Our team had the 8:00am practice slot today, so off we went, coffee in hand. It was much warmer than I'd expected, given how chilly it was during the game last night. It was actually a great morning to be outside playing baseball. I just wish 8:00 happened a little closer to 9:30am.

By the way, there's a project called "24 Hours of Flickr" and anyone who wants can upload a picture that they took on 5/5/07. The Flickr people are going to look through all those photos (oy!) and put the best ones into a book. I am not nearly as good as half or more of the people using Flickr, but I'm getting better. This photo was my entry, because I was thinking to myself that baseball is a huge part of many people's lives this time of year. And there's something about seeing an empty ball field that just looks sad, somehow. Now I know that later in the morning, this was a bustling spot, but not at 8:00am.

My two backup photos, one of a glove and one of my flowering crab apple, are available on my Flickr page (click my name below).

Labels: baseball

I'm a teeny bit annoyed right now, because I didn't get to use the camera at all today. This was not the most relaxing day, can I just complain about that. Some woman I don't know was talking to me in the cafeteria yesterday, about how she's just as busy on weekends as she is at work during the week. It's just a different kind of busy. Today was a different kind of busy. We did grocery shopping, laundry, baseball tryouts, Target and Dick's Sporting Goods errands, picked up dog poop in the yard, dishes, more laundry, get the house picked up a bit because Junior is having a sleep over tonight. Oh, ya, his first sleep over.

So I finally sat down to eat something (I had chicken breasts, chicken stock, canned mushrooms (shut up, they work better in the crock pot) and cream of 'shroom soup in the crock pot all day. Served it over No Yolk egg noodles. It made me happy. The boys were eating something else and ended up asking for some of the chicken, and Junior even asked for seconds. I'm still stunned. But they are off playing Roller Coaster Tycoon and I'm finally sitting down at the computer. Ahhhh.

p.s. Baseball tryouts went great. I was terrified he'd be awful because he literally hasn't touched a ball since last summer. He more than held his own in there, and I was SO happy. And hey, when he had me hold his glove during the batting part of tryouts, a kid hit two foul popups into the bleachers and I held out Michael's glove to catch them. Everyone was actually cheering me the 2nd time it happened. In your FACE, other parents!

Labels: baseball, errands, Saturday