Icarus’ First Photo-shoot

The Penn State intramural softball schedulemakers have put me in quite a pickle for the next few weeks. My games for church league softball are every week on Mondays at 6:30 through mid-August, but four of our five IM games were slotted for Mondays at 7:00pm. Argh. So I had to make a choice, and this week I chose Mid-Life Crisis, the meteo grads/staff team, because otherwise we wouldn’t have had even a full team, due to some of our roster being out of town or otherwise unavailable for the game. It was a good start to the season for team meteo, as we beat a team of summer session freshmen 16-4 in 5 innings (you won’t see a greater age difference on an IM field, probably). Walter’s pitching was superb, inducing many pop-ups, and we would’ve shut them out if it weren’t for a few overthrows here and there. Our offensive power game was in full swing too, with Brett and Nat hitting some bombs in the heart of our order. I didn’t contribute a ton, playing left field (only had one ball kinda come my way and it dropped in right before I could get to it) and going 1-for-4 at the plate (lineout to left, fielder’s choice grounder to short, groundout to the pitcher, and an infield single to 3rd) with two runs scored. The other team was a pretty inexperienced bunch; for example, on my tapper to the pitcher, there was nobody out and runners on 1st and 2nd, so he should’ve thrown either to 3rd or 2nd to force one of the lead runners, but instead he threw me out at 1st. Dumb play, but thank you. Daniel knocked in both of the lead runners on the next play, if I recall correctly.
After the game a few of us stuck around for a little extra batting practice, during which time I managed to sprain my left thumb (glove hand) while fielding a ground ball. So that’s been a bit tender and sore ever since. Early today it hurt enough that I was wondering if there was a hairline fracture (a year ago I suffered a non-displaced hairline fracture on my left pinky while trying to catch a football), but as today went on it started to feel a bit better. You never really realize how often you use your left thumb for everyday tasks until it hurts too much to use it for much of anything. I’m hoping it’ll be fine soon, because I have to play piano in church this Sunday…
Sprain and all, it’d appear that I made the right choice for which softball game to attend, because the church team had 17 or 18 players this week, and got crushed by St Paul’s Methodist 33-2. Ouch. I think Ryan said tonight that one of their players had *five* ground-rule triples. Somehow I doubt I would’ve made a difference in the outcome. 🙂 Last week they only lost by 1 run to Faith Baptist, though, after making a valiant comeback.
Tonight my church had a big life group picnic out at Spring Creek Park, which I’d never been to yet. It’s a really nice place, actually, and even has real water, which makes it a seeming rarity in central PA (or anywhere in Pennsylvania, for that matter). After the meal they had everyone play in a series of team games, including an M&M relay (six people per team, each person eats all the M&Ms of one color (more than one bag’s worth) from a big container-full before handing off to the next person — my team won!), a boat race (each three-person team was given ten minutes to construct a “sea-worthy” boat out of random stuff, like foam, straws, popsicle sticks, etc., and then float it down 50-100 yards of Spring Creek — the boat that Ben, Chris & I built started out well, but listed and was the first to sink when it got rammed by another boat, haha), and a cherry pit spitting contest (stand behind a line, aim for them to land on a plate a few feet in front of you — we tied for first in that). It was a fun time hanging out with everyone outside of church.
Caren just adopted/bought a kitten today! She’s named him Icarus, and tonight she invited a few people over to admire and play with the kitten, who was so excited and playing so hard that he was panting, haha. At first he was only interested in the toy with a bell, and then when Caren put a collar on him with a bell, he really didn’t know what to do because the jingles kept following him. 🙂 But eventually he started to figure out that there were indeed fun non-bell toys, and that the little treats actually were edible, hehe. Caren’s really proud of him, and he’s a really cute kitten!
CREM update: Last Friday, maintenance came and replaced the water- and urine-stained ceiling tiles in our bathroom. Only took them 12 days to get to it after our initial complaint, and it would’ve been longer if Petters hadn’t gone in there the day before to complain to them again.
Walker A/C update: The A/C miraculously came on yesterday morning around 10:30am, and surprisingly stayed on all day. It was even still on this morning, but then crapped out sometime around midday again. So if you add together all the hours this month that the A/C has actually been working in Walker Building, you’d get an aggregate total of about three days. And July 17th is just about in the books. This is really frustrating. Not that I’m ever eager to go to Walker, but I’m really not looking forward to tomorrow in the office…
I forgot to mention in my last post that I saw “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix” in the theater on Friday with Kerrie, Caren, Walter, Anke, Dave, Ben & Margaret. I still haven’t read any of the books, and only saw the fourth movie, but I was still interested in seeing this, the fifth flick. So while I didn’t know any of the story in advance, and only kinda knew a little of the story from the last movie, I was mostly able to follow what was going on, except for a couple insider-type references. And I thought it was a pretty decent movie overall, but just not quite as good as the fourth one. I’d give it three and a half stars out of five. Walter panned it, but that was just because he’d read the book *right* before going to see it, so all the book’s intricate details were fresh in his mind (and it was the first time he’d seen one of the movies *after* reading the book). Of course a two-hour movie’s not gonna capture an entire 700-page book! That’s the whole problem with books-turned-movies, because they can only capture the “Cliff’s notes” version of the high points. One of the few movies that I thought did a pretty decent job at capturing the book was “Lord of the Rings,” and even that had its issues with book fidelity (Faramir taking Frodo, Sam & Gollum to Osgiliath, anyone?). But anyway, I’d still recommend the new “Harry Potter” film to people, it’s an entertaining film even though it has very little humor in it. It’s a good deal darker than the fourth movie, but that’s because the story itself is darker; I’m told it’s darker yet in the sixth book, and will probably be pretty dark for at least a good portion of the seventh and final book, which is being released this weekend. Maybe someday I’ll get around to reading the books, but right now I’ve got a lot else on my plate to worry about…
…Like my iPod and RAM, which just arrived today. 🙂 The printer and iPod case should arrive tomorrow, and the laptop should get here on Thursday, probably. Woohoo! I still haven’t taken the iPod out of the box, because I’ve been busy doing other stuff all day. While everyone else is off reading “Harry Potter” this weekend, I’ll be playing with my new toys!