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After driving the same car for 10 years, I purchased a new Jeep Wrangler Monday night.
My little Honda CRV (bless its heart) has 183K and has been a great little car. But I’ve wanted a Jeep since, well, for at least 5 or 6 years now. And I love, love LOVE it!
I was 8 months pregnant with Buddy when I traded in my Geo Tracker (which was a Jeep wanna-be, but all I could afford at the time). I haven’t driven a straight shift since then, so almost 10 1/2 years. When we got in the Jeep for a test drive, I told the salesman and the kids (in the back seat with Sweetie yelling “Can we buy this one Momma?”) ”No laughing, now.”
I only bounced us around once or twice switching between 2nd and 3rd, and I’ve only konked out 5 or 6 times since I brought it home.
Now I just need to name it. Right now I have Twee, but that doesn’t really match too much, because I love this jeep, and twee is not always meant in a good way.
I pulled into the driveway the first night, and then had to resist the urge to peek out the window every 10 minutes or so, to make sure it was still ok.
I have been, and will continue to try to avoid work topics here on this blog. But today I gotta brag a little on my CRO – Chief Research Officer – Jack W. Seven times a year we put together presentation decks that he delivers to the press on the state of TV and such. For the summer deck, he actually presented in NY in person, so it was a little more involved than previous briefings.
Through a last minute oversight, my name didn’t make the “Thank you” list at the end of his presentation. So this afternoon I received these:
The card reads “With deepest apologies, but it’s only partly my fault. I won’t forget you again! Many thanks, Jack”
Now, how cool is that?!? My CRO rocks.
Drafted took 1st place in the Warm Up to Nationals tournament Saturday!
We had a great time… went 4-1 (the one loss took us to the “make” game), and left the fields around 12:15am late Saturday night.
Our first game at 9am was against the Bounty Hunters… quickly becoming semi-bitter rivals of ours. They’re great people, but we just can’t beat them!!!! Once again we got more than halfway through the game with the score close — 2-2. Usually this is where they have a break out inning and pull away for the win. But this time we had the breakout inning!
The win brought us back at 11am to play the only B team in the tournament. Ladies in Action… they would have to spot us 4 runs (it was an equalizer tournament). They would have, if they had showed up. We win by forfeit! And get a break until 4:30pm. I took the break and went home to spend time with EGlenn and the kids for a bit.
Back at 4:30pm we meet up with Georgia Lightning. Another tough team that we’ve played a lot this season… we’ve beat them only once before. After a shaky start we came from behind to win the game, and THAT bought us a break until 9pm!!!
Instead of going home again, several of us went up to Longhorn to get in the cool and have a place to sit for a while. We ordered mostly appetizers and sat around and shared pictures of kids / pets / vacation and the like.
Just as we pull up to the park for the 9pm game the thunder and lightning starts. Expecting quite a storm (it put the Braves into a rain delay) we settled in to watch Fully Loaded play Georgia Lightning for 3rd place. At one point Fully Loaded was down 12 runs, and on the verge of losing the game by run rule (10 ahead after 5 innings ends the game). They battled back to within 2 runs, but GA Lightning came to the plate with 2 outs and about a minute left to play. The batter called time out. Stepped in the box, and then the coach called time out, to get her to switch bats. They purposefully let time run out — it wasn’t a very clean end to the game, and several people were upset. One close call by the ump in the field was over-turned by the home plate ump in the last inning, which didn’t help the ill feelings either.
So GA Lightning stays in their dugout, and we move into the dugout Fully Loaded was in. In their unhappiness and anger they give us rounds of “Good Luck” and “beat them bad” and other things I won’t print here. We responded ”thanks” and “We’ll try” and “great comeback” and “good game, too bad” in return.
The game started probably around 10pm without it ever really raining, but the breeze cooled us off a little, so it wasn’t too terribly hot. In the 3rd or 4th inning they drilled one right up the middle… one bounce and right into Autumn’s knee. She went down hard and you could tell she was really hurt. Her knee started swelling, and there was already a small bruise forming on her knee cap. She decided to stay in and continue pitching, and we had a rough inning or two.
They hit up the middle a few more times, each time saying “Oh we’re sorry we’re not doing it on purpose.” and finally I kind of flipped and told them they needed to cut that shit out. And again I got the “but we’re not doing it on purpose” and my response was we’re playing competitive ball and you sure as hell can try to hit it somewhere else.
They wound up winning by a good margin. On to the “make” game. I wound up pitching, which can be shaky, at best. But, I did really well – I think I walked 2, and a lot of inside pitches.
They still hit 4 or 5 at me, and one I leaned away as the line drive hit off my glove wrist. I was not really happy about that one. We had one inning where we turned a double-play to end the inning, and they bitched and moaned to the umpire to ask for help (remember their game against Fully Loaded and how that went?). Now, as a rule, an umpire won’t ask for help on a judgement call. If your argument is someone came off the base, and the ump couldn’t see, then sometimes, only sometimes, can you get them to ask for help on a call. This dude did it twice in two games. They call her safe at 1st and they go on a huge scoring spree… all after the changed call. I was really unhappy about that one, and threw my glove into the dugout. Later GA Lightning was “talking” (they jabbered the whole damned tournament, it gets so old… you just want to say “shut up and just play ball” but it’s a part of some team’s M.O.) and said something to the fact that I was upset because they were hitting up the middle at me, but I was really upset that all those runs had scored after the changed call.
So, we score, they score, back and forth. It’s down to the 7th with the tying run at bat — two outs and two on. She hits a hard grounder back up the middle, I knock it down, and throw her out at first — game over and hitting up the middle is what ends the game. I also struck out 4 batters (in slow pitch softball!) and only made 4 outs at the plate all tournament.
So, Autumn and I got tournament Co-MVP, and we got a qualifier for Nationals, which are September 1st.
