The Manic Mechanic

So much has been happening around these parts since last week, most of which has been continuing work on the house, of course. There have also been some nice diversions, some with their own surprises. Those of you following baseball would know that the Baltimore Orioles made it into the playoff series, first among their own American League division, and more recently moved into the league champion series. If they win this (hopefully), they move onto the World Series. While not a big sports guy, I always had a fondness for baseball, since Jeff is the sports guy of the family (and we are an honest-to-goodness family now), he always had the desire to go see a championship game if not a World Series game. Through some searching he came upon a reasonably priced pair of tickets, and on Friday morning, we headed into the big city to spend the day at the ballpark. We headed out about two hours before the game, since it was a sellout and they were expecting a lot of crowds, traffic and general bustle. Couple that with this all occurring during working hours, I expected pure hell. Imagine our complete surprise when we rolled into town and got parked in about five minutes! Granted, my handicapped parking plaque helped shave a couple minutes from the parking search at best, but once we got parked, I told Jeff, "I think something is wrong." But we happily trotted out of the parking garage and spent a bit of time strolling the Inner Harbor to use up some of the time before the ballpark opens. After warming a bench but the water, we headed up to the park, had our tickets scanned, and off we went to find our seats. Quite often we are anxious when we buy tickets from a third party, not knowing for certain if everything is legit. We both breathed a sign of relief when we heard the happy beeps from the barcode scanners. So far, we haven't had any trouble of this sort, but we we worry just the same. We had a bit of a issue finding the seats, and being that we passed the escalators a while back, I headed up the stairs though Jeff was unsure of my success. We climbed and climbed, and as I neared the very top, I felt an uneasy feeling of weakness in my legs and some dizziness. I sat on the steps as this passed, and upon getting up to the highest level, we still couldn't find the proper gateway. We asked a staff member, and they said we had to go back down to the green doors that we passed on the way up. To our surprise, we had scored club-level seats! Things kept getting better! It's been years since we had club seats, and in the past it was from work connections. We grabbed a nice lunch from the more upscale concessions on the level and headed to our seats.

We had a fantastic view near the left field foul post. The game started, with the O's picking up two points in the bottom of the 3rd, then the Tigers got 5 at the top of the 4th inning, and the Orioles one more in the 4th. Then... nothing. The game went on with no more points and looking bad for the home team. At the top of the 8th, the Tigers got another run, bringing the score to 6-3. Then the Detroit pitching staff began to fall apart. The fans got loud again. The bases got loaded and the Orioles get a grand slam homer that could not happen at a better time. When the Orioles took out the Tigers at the top of the ninth, the sound in that ballpark was deafening. I've never been to such a squeaker win before, and it was a sweet victory. The cheering kept on even as 50,000 peop0le were heading out of the ballpark.

While I've never put a lot of thought into sports in general over the years, and I tend not to get much excitement watching on television, there's something to be said being a part of a crowd rooting for their team. It becomes downright exciting, especially in these high-stakes games, and a win is a complete thrill. There is palpable positive energy in the air, and Baltimore takes their wins and losses in stride. Baltimore hasn't been in a playoff position in a long time, and the entire state gets a nice little bump in happiness along with everything that goes with it. It genuinely feels good.

However, our day wasn't over yet. It was closing in on rush hour, on a Friday afternoon. Rather than trying to beat the traffic out of town, we toddled back down to the Inner Harbor, hoping to get a table at Bubba Gump's for dinner. With a lot of people streaming toward our destination, I worried we'd be suck waiting. After all, I can't walk very fast anymore. But we got a nice table, picked a nice dinner from the menu (they have fried shrimp, baked shrimp, shrimp sandwiches, shrimp creole, shrimp scampi, shrimp gumbo, shrimp kabob, shrimp...) and even met up with a guy that Jeff had been talking to on Growlr. We made a new friend while enjoying dinner and dessert, and we got out of town just as fast as we had got in. The day couldn't have turned out any better. Jeff had to work this past weekend, and I went to visit and have dinner with him on Sunday night. He was upset that he couldn't watch the game, but had a live game score update running on his PC. Nearing the end of the game, Jeff had to leave his desk to finish business for the night. I watched the screen for him as the numbers changed. Wouldn't you know it, it was a last minute 8th inning charge much like Friday! There I was, alone in the office, getting excited as some numbers changed on a screen. Even cheering. Jeff then came back, looked at the screen and cheered too.

I did a lot of work on Saturday and Sunday on the house, and the home team bookended a practically perfect weekend.

Jeff and I had been looking forward to heading to PA this weekend to see Penn State play Nebraska this Saturday. With Penn State having a good record as well as Paterno achieving the record of being the winningest coach on college football history, we expected the game to be one for the books. Their last home game of the season, the celebrations for both the team and Paterno's wins, etc. Jeff and I figured that ol' JoePa, hanging in for as long as he had been, was doing so not just for his own record, but to keep the team riding high, to go on to championship games, will finally call it quits. No one could have expected the sudden scandal to engulf the university and some of its top officials, including Joe. So, in a matter of a couple days, the jubilant air of excitement has collapsed into shock, disbelief and anger. Joe Paterno was fired late tonight, despite saying that he would retire at the end of the season.

There is so much to this unfolding story that it is tough for me to figure it all out. I have never been much of a football fan until Jeff came into my life. He's the diehard, and because he would watch the games so intently, often cheering or yelling at the screen, I ended up becoming involved, and not just to find out what the noise was all about. We've gone to many football games, college, pro and Jeff's nephew's school games (the latter being pure awesomesauce). While I might not be as animated as Jeff at the games, I get caught up in his enjoyment, which makes it all worth it. I have no idea what will happen this weekend, and Jeff had earlier said that part of him does not want to go. Now that Paterno has been unceremoniously fired, the increasingly weighty scandal will undoubtedly crush the enthusiasm of the players, students and fans, which is the one thing that makes an otherwise complicated and oftentimes baffling game a joy to watch. Win or lose, over 110 thousand people always have a great time in that stadium. That alone is the reason to experience such a game at least once in a lifetime. I have a feeling it's going to seem more like a funeral.

I finally am getting around to pulling photos from my digital cameras and posting them. I'm going backwards through the memory cards and posting the latest pictures first to my Flickr account. Also, I've installed a Flickr uploader app on the PC to make the batch uploading and tagging much faster. I'm also playing around with a new version of Photoshop, I have finally gotten past my version 5.5 educational version I bought eons ago. For this batch, though, all I used it for was resizing and compressing. These are shots, plus one video, from the Penn State vs. Oregon State game from last weekend. While some of you couldnt care less for football, there is at least some eye candy to be found, as well as my excellent commentary. ;)



The full set is here.

Criticism welcome.