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August 29, 2006
First Visit to Camden Yards
Hmm, it'd appear that once again I've slacked a bit the past few days and haven't put up a blog entry in nearly a week. I guess life just got in the way. I'm sure you've all been able to survive without the latest updates from the Life O' Jared anyway. :-P
Yet again outdoor baseball has shown its superiority to the sterile Metrodome. On Tuesday last week I drove down to Baltimore with Jacob, where we met up with Carl to head to the Twins-Orioles game at Camden Yards, my first-ever visit to that stadium. So that we wouldn't have to mess with ballpark/downtown traffic we just took the light rail to the stadium from Carl's neighborhood. (Tangent: In my experiences visiting various cities, I've become a huge proponent of public transportation, particularly trains. 
I really hope that Minneapolis/St Paul will develop a top-notch network of rail lines a la Melbourne, Australia (beyond the Hiawatha Line, the only one currently in operation in MSP), and it'd be nice if CATA (the bus company) here in State College wasn't completely mismanaged. You know, like allow people to purchase day passes, provide monthly passes at something at least resembling a discount, and provide more routes at more times, all of which would increase ridership and make it less necessary to own a car in this town. /Tangent) It was a gorgeous evenings for a ballgame, though we did have a tad bit of an adventure with our tickets. We showed up early to get our tickets, then went across the street to a popular local watering hole on gamedays briefly. 
Then when we were about to head into the stadium, we noticed our tickets were for Friday's game vs the Devil Rays. Hmmm. So we went back to the ticket lady, and as soon as she saw us she immediately knew what the problem was and fixed it for us; she realized her mistake a minute or two after we left initially, and she was just hoping we'd come back so she could rectify the situation. Overall I'd give the Orioles ticket staff a big thumbs up for politeness, and the three of us all thought we were back in the Midwest for a few minutes there! :-) 
Anyway, we got in the stadium in time to see the first pitch, and we enjoyed some delicious Boog's BBQ (though I perhaps put on a tad too much horseradish in a couple places, gobs of it can get really spicy!) before heading up to our seats in the upper deck. It was an absolutely gorgeous view of downtown Baltimore from our seats, and it's just too bad the Twins bats were silenced by the Orioles rookie pitcher, who at one point retired 21 Twins batters in a row. Combine that with Carlos Silva giving up FIVE solo home runs to Baltimore, and three to a single batter (a light-hitting rookie, no less), and you had a recipe for a 6-3 Twins loss. Despite the loss it was still a very enjoyable evening, and afterward the three of us went out to a place in Carl's neighborhood to grab some wings with Old Bay seasoning on them -- those were some of the best wings I've ever had.
Shortly after Carl left for work in the morning Jacob & I left for State College. Hooray work. Though in actuality since "work" that day consisted of forecasting and recording a CNET weather segment, I really have nothing to complain about. :-)
Wingfest last week was, in my opinion, the best week so far in terms of quality. Just about every flavor of wings I had was delicious (particularly the Carribean Jerk and Honey Bourbon BBQ from Wegmans). I brought Tim and Ben from PSCG along for the experience, as they'd never been to Wingfest before. This coming week is the final, so all the winning vendors from the past few weeks are gonna be there. You won't wanna miss it!
Attendance at trivia was a bit sparse on Friday evening (just Victor, Daniel, Katie and me) due to a whole bunch of people going whitewater rafting down at Ohiopyle, but we managed to hold down the fort and get 3rd place in surprising fashion, by getting the final question wrong with an all-in wager. Our team name was "The Ozzie Guillen School of Anger Management," which got a few laughs from the baseball fans in attendance.
A bunch of us went out to the Phyrst on Saturday night (woo!), which was fun. Graham Spanier, the President of Penn State University, even showed up to play with the Phyrst Phamly band with a very unique contraption of an instrument -- I'm not quite sure what it was, but it looked cool. Somewhere during the course of the evening, amidst the fun bluegrass and folk music, I lost the battle with Jacob about who knew more completely and totally obscure Bible trivia. And yes, at one point we were both going through the order of the books of the Old Testament out loud. At the Phyrst. On a Saturday night. For those of you that weren't there, you really missed out. ;-)
Due to Sunday's two inches of rain, the softball field was unplayable, so the end-of-the-season celebration for church softball was relegated just to a party at Pizza Hut. Adam and Leslie made baseball cards for everyone on the team though, to show their appreciation for everyone showing up and playing. I think that's a really cool idea, and here's an image of my baseball card. They labeled my position as utility because I played three positions in one game and I think six or seven positions overall during the course of the season. To see the entire album of cards and photos, click here.
And we might be taking intramural flag football a bit too seriously this fall, but hey, I like it. We've installed a version of the Cover 2 defense, and we've had a couple practices already to start getting down the QB-WR timing on passes and routes and whatnot, yet the first game isn't until late September. I think we all just have football fever, it's gripped this town. Only four more days to go until Penn State has their season opener vs Akron!!!!
Posted by Jared at August 29, 2006 01:04 AM
Comments
Hey, your card says `Evangenical Free.` Doesn`t that mean you`re without? Like saying this product is `MSG Free` or `this place is bug free`? Just wondering.
Posted by: Joshua at August 29, 2006 10:55 PM