And… we’re off!

Drafted has now played in two tournaments.  And both were cold and rainy.  But, we’ve had fun, we’ve played ball, and we’ve laughed a lot.  It’s good to be back together with this group of women — they’re all fun to be around, and we all are playing a game we love to play.

Our first tournament at Metro was The Spring Fling on March 29th.  We lost our first game 9-12 to The Bounty Hunters, and then lost to an Alabama team 14-13 in the 8th (extra innings for softball, we only go 7).  The rain started some time during that game.

We had a couple of hours until the next game so we headed for dry grounds and a bite to eat.  While we were gone “the bottom dropped out” and the fields were flooded.  But ball was still being played.  I wish I’d gotten a picture of Field 1, it was definitely the worst.  Here’s a sample of how our field looked for Game 3:

 

You could run around the water unless there was a play, then you had to go right through it.  Oh fun.  Field one had a mud puddle (more like a lake) that went from 5 feet past 1st all the way to 2nd.  The 2nd baseman had to play in the middle of it.

They moved the tournament to a one pitch, and we lost — don’t remember the score, because we were actually kind of happy to leave — it was still raining and didn’t look to be ending any time soon.  I know at one point I walked to the plate and asked the catcher if she smelled what I smelled and she did — it smelled like lightning.  ick.

We were hoping on April 12th we’d have better weather — if not warmer, at least drier.  Not to be so — the high was in the low 60s if we were lucky.  It started raining some time Friday and was still going strong when we arrived in Conyers at 9:30am.  Our game was supposed to start at 10, but we knew there was trouble when 1 field wasn’t being played on – was totally under water.  So the 9am game from that field played on our field before we could play – so we started around noon.

I played first and those are my cleats after the first game — AND after I’ve cleaned some of the mud off.  I had mud up the inside and outside of my pants to my knees.  We beat the Lady Roadrunners and didn’t have another game SCHEDULED until 4:30pm.  We were guessing we’d play around 6 and we were wrong.

We got cleaned up (i.e. changed clothes in the parking lot) and went to Applebees so Shannon could have a Perfect Margarita (or two).  Then off to the mall for a stretch of the legs and back to the fields.  To sit and wait…and wait and wait.  We actually wound up playing after 6:30pm.  We played Ladies in Action (used to be a B team) and lost 16-5.  We had a couple of bad innings in the field but otherwise didn’t play as bad as it seems looking at the score.  And so then we got to… wait some more!

We wound up playing Fully Loaded (another used-to-be B team, with an A team player) at 8-ish (the sunset was amazing, but I was coaching 3rd and didn’t get to take a pic!).  We were winning 3-2 for a while, but wind up losing 3-5.  We came in 5th place — pretty good for our 2nd tournament, and up against some strong opponents!

We’ve opted out of playing in Cumming this weekend, and look forward to playing April 26th in Lovejoy for Flag City.

Words to live by

“Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well-preserved body, but rather skidding in sideways, chocolate in one hand and wine in the other, body thoroughtly used up, screaming, ‘WOO-HOO!! What a ride!”

Sometimes I feel like I’m not even in line yet, but standing a few feet back watching the ride, hearing the screams, watching people get off the ride — hair tassled, grins on their faces and chattering with their friends using interjections like “Awesome!” and “I know!” and “Let’s go again!” 

I’m ready to get in line again.  I’m getting back on the ride.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

I raise a glass of Guinness to you all!

Daft Hands… Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger

I like house/electronica/dance type music.  A while ago I saw this video on YouTube:

Now Kanye has a song with this song sampled in the background, and it reminded me of the video. 

And now, I have to say I found this one and it’s even better:

What would we do without the internets?  You can wonder out loud about some fact, question, date, size, measurement, event, and it’s almost a race to find the answer.  Well, at least in my department.

Baseball, Shorpy, and the Circus

Baseball is starting up.  Softball schedules are being emailed out.  The kids are losing teeth on such a regular basis that the Tooth Fairy may rent out the spare room (Buddy is starting his molars, Sweetie is moving to remainder of front teeth).  Twee’s top came down last Sunday for a wonderful sunny ride about town.  Yep.  Spring is in the air — and in my sinus cavity.

Buddy, Sweetie and I hit some balls on Sunday, but they only had baseball.  They both hit 40mph, and did ok, considering they’ve only been twice, and I hit 40 and 50mph, and did ok, considering I’ve never played fast pitch in my life.  The 60mph button was dark, and I chickened out going for 70mph.  Maybe next time.  And, I hit with my 30 ounce softball bat, so yay me!

I’ve got my Women’s C Team schedule up as well as my Atlanta Ad League schedule, although until we get all the interested teams in and the league drawn up, I won’t know opponents or times until later.  I hope we can bounce back from the sad short season we had this past fall.

I’ve changed my desktop picture to a more seasonal theme.  This great blog I’ve just found – Shorpy - has some incredible high definition pictures.  Just amazing stuff.  I think I’m getting the mlb.com package for my birthday, so I’m really getting into the baseball frame of mind.

And on a totally unrelated to the rest of this post, we surprised the kids and took them to the circus 2 weekends ago.  Through pulled strings of our CRO’s exec admin Kim B. (rock on, Kim!) we got seats in the VIP Suite our company owns.  It was a nice surprise for them, and 2 bags of cotton candy (with 2 hats), 2 souvenir sports bottles of lemonade, and 1 spinny toy later, we were $62 poorer (yes!), but a happy family.

Yar, Matey

I <3 Richard Simmons

One of the funnier ads from the Super Bowl last night.  I  <3 Richard Simmons!

My first attempt at embedding a video…

The Earworms are back.

Bring me…. the earworms… (say in an evil Kahn-from-Star-Trek voice). 

From Wiki:
Earworm, a loan translation of the German Ohrwurm, is a term for a song stuck in one’s head. Use of the English translation was popularised by James Kellaris, a professor of marketing at the University of Cincinnati. His studies appeared to demonstrate that different people have varying susceptibilities to earworms, but that almost everybody has been afflicted with one at some time or another.

I’ve posted about ear worms before, in a previous blogging life. That life too, was a slack-ish and short-lived life.  But we’re not here today to talk about my slack-tivity.  We’re here to talk about Dammit, Janet.

I had actually moved away from my ear worms the last 3 or 4 months.  It was actually quite strange, not having a constant song in my head.  Enough that I noticed it, at least. 

But I’ve started a new plan to get fit, and the plan I’m working on gives me about 41 weeks (starting last week) to get to the top of my goal weight range.  This has been my mantra the last week and a half.  41 weeks… 41 weeks… 41 weeks… no, you don’t want to eat poor choices, you’ve got 41 weeks… yes, you really DO want to go exercie, you’ve got 41 weeks… and so on.

It’s actually worked so far (I’ve got 40 weeks).  I only exercised 4 times last week, but my food choices weren’t too bad.  I’m trying to go for moderation without counting every stinking calorie that passes my lips.  I was on a super-strict diet once or twice and I lost weight, but the second the strict part was gone, I was gone too.  (remember the slack-tivity above? It’s all encompassing.)

So, by introducing the repetitive mantra, I’ve obviously awakened the ear worms from their brief hibernation.  We’re on day 3 of Dammit, Janet.  But it’s not so bad. 

40 more weeks.
J-A-N-E-T I love you so, oh, oh!

Santa visit? Check.

We finally were able to get our yearly visit with Santa.  Whew!  Right now I only have 4 years of Santa pictures on my flickr site, but I hope to update with all 9 of them.

 

I think there are 9, I know we had one year that Buddy was NOT interested in seeing Santa.  Nope, nu-uh… until 2pm on Christmas Eve.  We got to the mall and counted the number of families in line, did the “well each person takes about 3 min’s” calculation and realized we’d get to the front of the line JUST as Santa took his hour break.  And by then we’d be late for Christmas dinner at my family’s.  He was able to get his attention and wave to him, but no picture.

In 2003 or 2004 Sweetie had no interest in seeing him and started crying just as we got to Santa.  We tried to get her to sit with him, but no dice.  So Santa (we’ve had the same Santa for at least 5 years) told her “oh, no I have something I forgot to do here in the back” and walked behind the stage while we put her and Buddy in the huge chair.  Then once she had calmed down, he snuck back in for the picture.  It may be my favorite one!  Although they are all awesome!

Milestone!

After much apathy, whining, and dragging of the feet (excuse the pun), Sweetie – my darling little left-hander in a family full of right-handers – finally learned to tie her shoes!

Woo!

I was told this would make a good topic to blog about (by Sweetie herself, of course), so I got the camera out and documented the process over the Thanksgiving weekend.  Already just a week later, she’s gotten much better and will be a pro in no time.