Giants 11, Cubs 5
I actually went to the health club every day this week - six days in a row, counting last Sunday. Alternating aerobics with weight training worked pretty well. Now I'm trying to get up a little earlier in the morning, so I can go work out and still get to work before 10 am. This is a good trick, because I am very slow to wake up in the morning. Unless there's some reason I have to get up as soon as the alarm goes off, it's usually at least 30 minutes between the radio coming on and me getting out of bed.
But I'm biting the bullet and slowly moving the alarm back towards 6:30 am. And since it takes me about an hour to go through my morning routine...
Anyway, I woke up around 8:30 and got in my car to meet them at their place by 10:00. I was a few minutes late, having gotten a very slightly late start. The plan was to go get dim sum and then get on the road to the game by noon.
The dim sum place we went to in Palo Alto was pretty good, though I accidentally ordered veggie steamed wontons rather than meat. But it worked out okay. CJ and I unfortunately have different tastes in meals; she doesn't eat any meat except seafood, whereas I prefer to eat meat, except that I don't eat seafood. David, as far as I can tell, will eat anything. We ordered probably the right amount of food, but had to wait around for some of the key dishes to materialize, though we left more than enough time in our schedule, and were on the road by noon.
Problem is, we should probably have gotten on the road about a half an hour earlier. Traffic was intense, and parking at the game was scarce; large sections of the main lot were full by the time we arrived. CJ was despondent, since we were going to be late, and none of us had had to deal with full lots at Commercialstick before, so we weren't sure where we'd park.
Amazingly, we ended up being directed to a lot right next to the ballpark's outer wall, albeit on the far side of the park from our seats. If we'd been along the first base line, we'd have had hardly any walk; instead, we walked the quarter-mile or so around the perimeter and got there near the end of the first inning.
It's interesting to see Ceej's baseball fandom develop. She's probably where I was five years ago: Somewhat knowledgeable about the game, voraciously learning about it (you would not believe the quantity of baseball crap material I've been pushing on her, including Ken Burns' PBS miniseries), and enjoying going to every game she can get to. It makes her a lot of fun to go to games with and to watch games on TV or talk about games in e-mail with.
I'm sort of at the other end, though: I've been in high-level fan mode for six years, and I'm kind of worn out by it. My team is 3,000 miles away, and my adopted team is 2,000 miles away. And the Giants - who are definitely more fun to watch than the A's, and have a better ballpark - are in the "wrong" league, which makes it harder for me to plug into them. So I don't get into the games quite as much, unless they involve the Red Sox. It's sad to realize this, but, really, I've never been able to work up much enthusiasm for the National League.
But if CJ's noticed this, she hasn't said anything. And I do enjoy going to the games... but, somehow, less than it seems I once did.
It was a good game, against the Cubs today. We saw Sosa today (he didn't do much, going 0-for-4), and we'll see McGwire and the Cardinals in a few weeks. The slugger "difecta". The pitching - Shawn Estes for the Giants and a rookie for Chicago - was atrocious, by-and-large, and the Giants just managed to bunch singles and doubles together in a timely manner to batter the Cubs into the earth. David, CJ and I talked about the relative merits of "slugger-ball", and I opined that I preferred the game in the early 90s, when pitchers didn't have it so hard. Things seemed more balanced.
We had seats way down the third base line, because the good seats closer in had gone very early. So afterwards we went to the ticket office and got our tickets for three more games this fall, to the Braves, Met, and Diamondbacks. So I'll be going to at least eight games this year, more than I've ever been to in a season before, I think. And we'll surely go to at least one A's/Red Sox game this fall, too. Wow!
After we got back to their place, we spent the rest of the day playing Starcraft, and David and I played a game of Abalone, which I'd brought over. We ordered pizza, watched David feed the yorkies, and usual stuff like that. It was fun.
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