Monthly Archives: June 2011

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Reds vs. Yankees

This was a game that had been rain-delayed and then turned into a double header and was totally awesome!

Game highlights:

  • Andrea and I had come up with a plan to get to the game Tuesday that involved me sitting through a meeting of hers before she drove me to work, which involved getting up early. Then the game got cancelled just as she was coming to pick me up. We went to the farmer’s market and got some bread and lettuce and then we got some delicious self-serve frozen yogurt at Orange Leaf Frozen Yogurt.
  • The game was rescheduled the next night as the second game of a double header. The rain looked like it would hold off, so we decided to go–because it was the Yankees and because we love to go to baseball games. (We both had to be at work early so we got up early again).
  • I had to pick her up this time, and I was a little late, but we got to our seats with all our stuff before the first pitch, and that’s all that matters.
  • Andrea brought us some strawberries. It felt really good to eat something fresh and healthy at a game for once (after we’d already eaten our hot dogs).
  • We’d already lost the first two games of the series, and we’d lost several more before that. Then Heisey hit a home run as the lead off hitter in the 1st inning. Things were looking up.
  • The Yankees tied it with a lead-off home run of their own the next time up. Boo.
  • Heisey, Heisey, Heisey–3 homeruns and 5 RBIs! The big star of the game! Someone needs to start playing every day.
  • Great neighbors! The couple on our left were from Louisville, and the couple on our right (Yankees fans, but nice ones) were from Connecticut.
  • Bad weather–but not on us. In the 6th or so our Louisville neighbors started hearing about tornadoes at their houses. Their families were safe, and their property, but that area was pretty badly hit.
  • A storm was on its way to us to, but the front split and didn’t end up hitting until we were on our way home.
  • Reds win!!! If we forget about Saturday’s game then the streak continues!
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Library Summer Reading

The Cincinnati Public Library has a summer reading program/contest for adults as well as kids and teens. I thought this was pretty cool when I saw the email about it, but at first I wasn’t that interested because I read enough on my own that I don’t need an incentive to read more–but then I saw the prizes for the contest. One prize is Reds tickets–they pretty much had me there, but the person who reads the most books at each library branch will win a Nook Color. I have a regular Nook, but a Nook Color is so much cooler, and it would be awesome to say I won it.

The competition problem: I am far from an idle person, and at best I can probably crank a book out every other day, and since I go to the Wyoming library I feel that I am competing with a lot of fairly rich homemaker types and retirees who have little else to do all day but read (I’m sure this comment could be offending to some of the people I’m referring to, but this is what my imagination has pictured as my opponents). I do not, at least seem to be competing against anyone but adults, because it really wouldn’t be fair to compete against kids who have shorter books and have a whole summer to kill with reading.

The library-created problem: In order to get credit for reading a book I have to log on and fill out an online form about the book I read. When I did this the first time I discovered that the only thing I’m required to fill in is how many books I read. The parts that are optional are a review, the title, and author of the book. That’s it. So what’s stopping some cheater from typing that they read 100 books when they haven’t read any? And what’s stopping some adult from reading 100 picture books and counting them? There is no specification to what type of book to read that will count or any specific number of pages, which is probably good for me, since all I mostly just read YA (I’m not counting the children’s books I read to the kids at school over and over each day), but I feel that YA is on pretty much equal footing to adult books–some are quite long, and some adult books are short, and if I were reading adult books for the contest I’d be picking short ones. I will not be cheating, and I hope that my competition will be just as honorable.

So far I’ve finished six books since the program started June 1, and I’ve won the second level prize. There’s no leader board that I know of, so I don’t know how I compare to all those idle Wyoming people, but I’ll just do my best and see where that gets me!

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Reds vs. Blue Jays…the streak is over

A sad day yesterday. I witnessed my first losing Reds game of the season 😦

Here’s the scorecard.

The ill-fated game...

Here are the highlights:

  • Andrea was back from her trip in time for the game! Yay!
  • We got great spots for watching batting practice. I saw Bill Bray, ever the fan-friendly player, for the third time this season. He signed my ticket (see above). If I would have been thinking more clearly I would have had him sign my baseball socks (He’s the only player on the team who always wears his socks and is therefore one of my favorites.)
  • The most awesome-est and wonderful and my very favorite player finally came and signed my ball: Ryan Hanigan!!!! (Jay Bruce had formerly been my favorite and Hanigan had been second until he signed my ball). Yay Ryan!!! I made sure not to let the autograph smear this time.
  • They don’t sell scorecards at the ballpark anymore apparently…They give them away for free at the fan accommodation window if I push past all the people waiting for designated driver bracelets.
  • Volquez pitched once again. I feel like his games are the only ones I ever see–and his games last FOREVER!
  • My attention span was not too great. I got bored somewhere around where it started raining, and it was done raining a couple innings later and I looked up and it was only the 5th inning or something like that.
  • I got an ice cream sundae in a Red’s helmet! Believe it or not, it was my first helmet sundae ever!
  • Oh, and I got “Spirit Hair”: a red mohawk on a headband. I am so wearing it to school on crazy hat day!

Next up: Yankees. I know my Reds can do it!

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Back to Work

I have stuck to my goal this time.

Originally I was going to get back to my writing work after my birthday (March 23). I will blame my 10K/5K for this lapse because I chose to spend my free lunchtimes running instead of writing. I know I could have fit proof reading and all that in at another time, because I am good at fitting in things I want/need to do in my schedule, but I really think this book needed extra space to sit. So my new goal was to work on my writing again once our summer session started at work–which is after my class is over with for the summer, after I had to set up my room for our next unit, and after the 5K/10K. That was this week.

My goal, I decided last Sunday night when I remembered that I’d decided to do this:

Monday, Wednesday, Friday: work on revising my finished book “New Book” in my “Categories” section

Tuesday, Thursday: make notes/world building/character building/plotting for the “New, New Book” (This is not what I’m actually calling it but is all I’m willing to reveal at this time)

Progress Week 1:

Monday, Wednesday: proofread my whole lunch hour

Tuesday: worked on world building my whole lunch hour

Thursday: had to get fingerprinted (again) for work to make sure, as I told the children, that I’m not a bad guy

Friday: forgot to add new pages to my proofreading pile so proofread for half an hour and read a book for the other half

Not too bad for the first week. My main temptation pulling me from these goals right now is reading, since I enrolled in the summer reading program with my library (they have an adult category!) and I’m trying to read as much as I can in order to win prizes. (I just qualified for the Level 2 prize!)

Let’s see how well I can stick to my goals!

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Redlegs Run 2011

This weekend’s adventure was a very ambitious run on my part–a 10k followed immediately by a 5k.

I’ve only done one 5k before and that is the extent of my racing experience besides walking a couple miles in a heart walk 2 times. I run for exercise but only as far as I can get in half an hour because I get bored and don’t really have time to devote to more. But 5k runner got a regular t-shirt, and 10k runners got a special running shirt, and those who registered for both got both shirts and two tickets to a Red’s game, so Andrea and I decided to give it a try. I started running during my lunch time on days I didn’t have time to run after work, so I got slightly longer runs and had some experience outside. My marathon runner coworker regularly asked me for updates on my progress and told me I’d do fine.

Andrea made a plan with her personal trainer. We would run a mile then walk a few minutes, then run again and keep that up throughout the 10k. The official plan for the 5k was to walk it, but Andrea and I both wanted to run it if we could. I knew by this time I probably could have handled running most of the 10k from my training, but it would be more fun to stay together, so we did. And I have a feeling if I’d tried to run more than I did I would have been a whole lot more worn out than I was, and I was still pretty tired but only a little sore.

Here are my times:

10k–1:26:22 (this was run/walk/run/walk the whole time)

5k–48:36 (we ended up walking most of this one but we ran for the last k plus a little)

Bonus notes:

  • It rained for the entire 10k. That led to news anchors calling the people who showed up for this one “elite runners.” I guess I am an elite runner now.
  • The rain made them reroute the course so we did not get to end on the track inside the stadium (boo.) There’s always next year.
  • We got some delicious cookies for finishing, and they also had hotdogs and pizza and ice cream somewhere, but the lines were too long there.
  • My favorite Reds blog, Jamie Ramsey’s “Better Off Red” met up before the 5k and after, so we got to meet him and earn his admiration for our crazy running accomplishment–and we got a free BOR shirt and official pairs of magical red shoelaces.
  • We also got to meet local news personalities Katherine Nero and Larry Handley, who had done the 5k (it was Katherine Nero’s first one) and talk to them and take a picture with them and earn their admiration for our crazy running accomplishment.
  • We were healthy enough afterward to do a few errands, and then we took a nap through about three innings of the Red’s game broadcast.

Me, Andrea, Katherine Nero, and Larry Handley after the 5k--Note that my pigtails are still wet from the 10k

Who knows what crazy ideas, physical or otherwise I’ll get myself into for future weekends? It’s vacation planning time, so there most likely will be something soon!

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Panic! Results

Here’s a belated update from last weekend’s adventure:

-The concert was awesome! My seats were in a box on a couch, so I could jump around all I wanted but didn’t get pushed by anyone!

-Fun. had a really great performance as openers!

-Panic! did great and played so many great songs! They pretty much avoided their second CD (which is Andrea’s favorite one), but I think they have a lot of unpleasant memories attached to it due to the break up.

-On the way home we stopped at the Strawberry festival in Trent, OH and tried everything from traditional strawberry shortcake to strawberry burritos. We brought back a bucket of strawberries and a bottle of strawberry barbeque sauce.

Such a great weekend it took me two days to fully recover–in time to go to King’s Island on Wednesday night!

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Panic! at the Disco!

I’ll soon be off to see my favorite band–Panic! at the Disco! I’m so excited!

The thing I love most about their music is how it tells stories–and the stories aren’t the cliche love stories songs are usually about–they’re weird ones (especially on the first cd, A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out) that really paint a picture in my head. More than one of their songs has loosely inspired a scene in my writing. I also love that their songs are weird enough that no one interpretation is necessarily the “right” interpretation–so I can recycle their songs in my head to mean different things at different times!

And they’re catchy.

And Brendon Urie’s voice is wonderful.

I’ve seen them once before when they opened for Blink 182’s comeback tour and I got to meet Brendon and Spencer and get their autographs!

This time I won’t be meeting them, but I’m pretty sure I have great seats–as long as I don’t get murdered in Detroit…

No–I love Detroit too, even if I haven’t really been there before, I feel like I’m coming home because my favorite radio station is there–89X! (I miss it so much down here in Cincinnati).

Okay, enough rambling. Time to get to work so I can play!