Ichiro Denied Me

As new residents of Northern California, our official initiation would not be complete without a trip to SBC, I mean PacBell, oh wait, I mean AT&T park to see the San Francisco Giants and everyone's favorite steroids user, I mean home run hitter, Barry Bonds. AND were in luck, the Mariners were in town for a spring training game.

So last night after work we headed to the park. I decided to be super cool and surprise Nick with really good tickets. And when I mean good, I mean, SUPER SWEET!

In case you missed us last night on FSN northwest, I have provided a picture for your viewing pleasure.

More on these amazing seats later.

The park is really nice, very much like safeco. We got to our seats and then decided to explore.
We had our own special underground area with our own bathrooms and food. But the coolest part was the area right next to the women's restroom. It was the area between the dugout and the clubhouse. Every Mariner had to walk right across the hall to get to the field. So we decided to hang out and see what would happen. Well, after about 15 minutes of waiting, I caught Willie Bloomquist's eye and asked for an autograph. Ok, so he doesn't start, but it's Bloomy! He signed my "Official Major League Baseball" I got a few years ago at a game in Seattle.


We decided to wait and see if we could get Ichiro to sign. The professional guys were cautiously optimistic. We had a kid and a girl (me). After another few minutes, and getting faked out about 5 times by the bat boy, Ichiro walked by. I yelled "ICHIRO" and he turns, looks me square in the eyes and says "Sorry." UGH! Oh well, I was about 5 feet away from him and it was a good story.

So we went back to our incredible seats where I was able to snap the following photos:




Ichiro stole a base in the 1st inning and the Giants didn't know what hit um.

Bonds. He's still good.

It was definitely a fun game. So now I have to talk about out seats. We were on FSN periodically all night so we thought we'd call our parents to see if they could see us. Let's just say that it took a few innings before our parents could locate us. Oh well.

1 last tidbit of info....these seats are actually located closer to the batter than the pitcher. Sweet! Too bad Zito killed us :-( It was still fun.

I was going to go on a run but there was a mountain lion sighting 4 blocks away....I don't feel like getting eaten or mauled today. I'll go golfing instead.

Visitors!

Well, it has been a while and Katie Musar wants an update! And what Katie wants, Katie gets!

With UW spring break, I have had a slew of visitors!

Beth came to visit me last Thursday (3/15)! We spent Friday exploring San Francisco. We arrived at the Embarcadero stop and walked to Fisherman's Wharf. We enjoyed Pier 39 and then headed to Boudin for some clam chowder bread bowls. I promised Beth a viewing of "the bush man," but apparently he only works on the weekends :-(



We then treated ourselves to a Dark Chocolate Fudge Sundae at Ghirardelli's. It was delicious and I highly recommend the dark chocolate fudge!

I'd love to show you more pictures.....but the catholic school teacher broke my digital camera. Sad day! Yeah, she dropped it, then she caught it, but when she caught it she broke the lens. Lesson learned: Never trust a catholic school teacher.

The rest of the weekend was pretty low key, shopping, street markets, and an early BART ride back to the airport.

THEN, Stacey came to visit me! She arrived Wednesday evening and spent Thursday alone in my townhouse...

We went to San Francisco on Friday and did pretty much the same thing as last Friday (but there were no complaints here). We walked to the wharf ready to have some delicious clam chowder bowls. But this time....Jenna Boule met us for lunch! She was spending break in SF and joined us for the afternoon. We had more dark chocolate hot fudge sundaes and then walked them off on our way to SHOPPING! Well, we actually made a detour and stopped at Grace Cathedral (same church where the Catholic teacher dropped my camera). There were no catholic school teacher issues this time and we took some nice pictures of the church (Americanized replica of Notre Dame).

We continued to Union Square and saw Madonna's new line at H&M. Then Stacey and I stood in line for Jersey Boys rush tickets. We saw the show and one of the actors had the eyes for Stacey. He winked at her, then the entire front row saw him do it and laughed, then he started laughing. Then he winked at her again at the end of the night. So that night they were taking donations for aids/cancer etc (it's a broadway fundraiser thingy)....when we made our donations the girl collecting the money (also in the show) goes:

Girl: "Hey, were you 2 in the front row?"
Us: "Yes"
Girl: "I saw both of you and you were so great to have in the front row"

Anyways, it made us feel good, like we were part of the show. Probably a dumb story to most.

Saturday was the day of dim sum, break dancing and altar boyz.

We took Nick to his first dim sum lunch. He didn't care for everything but definitely found some things he liked.

Then we went with Stacey to her breakdancing competition. Let's just say Nick and I didn't fit in. We were not as ghetto fabulous as the rest of the breakdancing homies. We left Stacey with her friends and headed to the theater to get our Altar Boyz tickets. We picked Stacey up from the breakdancing competition and then went back to the theater to see the show. It was lots of fun and pretty hilarious. I recommend it!

Well, now that you have a complete update of my previous 2 weeks....

OOOH wait. I have to make things right with nick. I locked him out this week. We are even. He had to MacGyver the chain bolt.

Ok, it's time to get back to the amazing race. It's between the guidos and terry and ian. This could be good.

Nicely done if you were able to make it to the end of this blog without being bored out of your mind.

It's been a while...

And Anthony wants an update.

So for anyone interested, Nick is now sort of in California. He still has his place in the ATL, but is working in the Tracy to Fresno region. Woohoo.

Last Sunday we went out to a very good dinner.....wait, I need to start from the beginning.

So the house I live in has a normal front door (door 1), a garage door and a door that leads from the garage to the kitchen (door 2) (trust me, this will all be important soon. So door 2 has a regular lock (you know, the kind that you lock from the inside by twisting the button) and a deadbolt....but I only have the key to the deadbolt. Door 1 has a chain lock, dead bolt and regular bolt and I keep all 3 of them locked (and also have the key to both locks). The main door is sort of out of the way so I always enter from the garage and through door 2.

Ok, back to the story. We had a very delicious dinner and headed back to the house (I had to go pee really bad). We open the garage and walk up to door 2.....uh oh....somehow the regular lock was locked (somehow....nick). Screwed! It's about 8PM and we are locked out. We go around to the front...even though I know that the chain lock is in place. We unlock the door and sure enough, the chain lock keeps the door from opening more than 5 inches. Nick tells me that my skinny little hand should be able to get it undone, but it doesn't work.

But never fear, I AM a mechanical engineer. So the chain lock is held in place by 2 wood screws. Shoot again! My tool kit is in the hall closet. Fortunately my mom makes sure I am prepared for everything. The emergency car kit has a screwdriver and it fits. So I squeeze my tiny little hand in through the 4 inch wide gap and slowly unscrew the chain lock (and I still really have to pee). I channeled my inner MacGyver and I eventually unscrewed the plate and we were in! Whew. That was my Sunday adventure.

Nick is still trying to get his hands on a Wii....apparently Nintendo is sending out another batch in April. That's fine by me, I have a busy next few weeks.

This week Beth is coming and next week Stacey is coming and Jenna will also be in town. Whew!

Now for the important stuff! Team Ramber (thanks to Katie for that lovely nickname) is off! Incredible! However, it really could have gone either way for me. I really don't like Rob and Amber but I also can't stand Charla and Mirna (the midget and her cousin). Either way I was going to be happy. Go Danny and Oswald! I love them.

I'm going to have to take it easy this week before my week and a half of visitors and fun!