Category: summer

Buy me some peanuts and crack’er jack!

It is well documented that I am a HUGE fan of baseball. I am also a huge San Francisco Giants baseball fan.

Pick up any sports page in the past few years and you will know that my poor Giants have fallen on hard times. The once mighty team is barely a squeak on the baseball radar.

It’s tough. The big boys are off to a rousing 3-6 start. Starting off the season at the bottom of the standings, cellar dwelling has become the standard. That’s where they finished up last year.

I used to go to a lot of games with a good friend of mine. She had season seats up at SBC Park and it was a lot of fun. We have bombed out on CalTrain into the summer night to watch our team plenty of times. Hell, I even wrote a book about it.

A year ago, my friend gave up her season seats at the big club. Health issues and rising seat costs along with baseball depression at the hands of a struggling team forced her decision.

She invested that year in season seats for the Single A affiliate, San Jose Giants. It’s a little cheaper and a lot closer to home.

She is also a “host family” for a player. This is her third year being “mom” to a young player who makes max about $10k a year and needs a rent free place to stay for the season. It makes her happy. She gets to cluck over a twenty something kid, he gets to eat well and they both get to talk baseball with someone who really understands.

This year my friend approached me about her “grand plan” to buy up a whole row of seats in the section she likes at Muni Stadium. It is only five seats, but she began recruiting friends to pitch in on the seats in exchange for access to games. It makes her most happy to go to games surrounded by friends and family. So she did such good a sell job, I wrote her a check.

Tonight The Good Man and I get to go to the game as “season ticket holders” along with my good friend and bunch of other fun folks.

There is a whole different vibe in Single A ball. The players are young and hungry. They play for meal money and not much more. They *want* it. Humility is high. There are audience games between innings. The beers are only $3. Half price when the designated “beer batter” on the opposing team strikes out.

Tonight is the home opener for the San Jose Giants, last year’s California League Champions.

Oh, did I mention they are 5-2 so far?

Yeah. Things are looking good in the minor league.

Photo by Karen Fayeth

It’s going away, isn’t it?

My friend. My companion. That comfort at the end of a long day’s work, driving home, watching the sun go down, laughing, cheering, listening. It’s leaving me again, just as the world turns cold. It always leaves me just when the sun starts setting sooner, when the chill rolls in, when the leaves turn. Just when I need it the most, it’s gone.

My old friend and joy, baseball, is leaving me again this weekend.

The San Francisco Giants played their last home game of 2007 last night, made all the more bittersweet as, after fifteen crazy years, it was the last game Barry Bonds will play in a Giants uniform.

It was year of agony and ecstasy.

Ecstasy: The San Jose Giants, the Minor League Single A affiliate, and a group of young ‘uns near and dear to my heart performed a miracle. Coming on strong in the first half and falling off hard in the second half, they still earned their way into the playoffs and prevailed. They are the 2007 California League Champions. They played an amazing post season and just brutalized Lake Elsinore in game 5, the deciding game. I get goose bumps just thinking about it. This was a hard working team of guys who learned how to win, and a tip of the cap to manager Lenn Sakata for taking yet another team to the post season.

Agony: Their big brothers to the North, however, didn’t fare so well. With three games left, they’ve lost 89 games and are a gut-turning 18.5 games out of first place.

This was the season that Bonds broke the all-time homerun record, walloping 756 over the walls and into the history books. But all the media glare, both positive and negative, had an impact on the other 24 guys on the roster. Starting pitching was ok (I won’t “go there” about the pitiful year Barry Zito had…I just…can’t…), the bullpen was ridiculous and hitting was lame. They went up there with sad and tired bats. And our star catcher bitched about it to the press.

It was not a glorious year. It’s the latest in all the depressing seasons we’ve endured after the joys (and pain) of the 2002 World Series.

Ownership says 2008 is a “rebuilding” year. That means some young kids, some no names, and no hope of a post season for at least a couple more years.

But even in the agony of this terrible season, it was there. Baseball was on the radio every night, 162 games a year. The bases were still 90 feet apart and it was still 60 feet, six inches from mound to plate. The Umps still missed calls, players were plunked, miracles were performed and for me, all was all right with the world.

I had a day yesterday for the record books, and as I drove home, looking into the setting sun, sad, mad, exhausted, apathetic, beat down, and depressed as hell, I reached out and touched the “power” button on my radio, and suddenly Jon Miller’s voice boomed out from my radio speakers, “a called strike one!” and I left behind my troubles. My sorrow. My bone wearying exhaustion and I listened to the game. Smiling at strikes, frowning at balls and batting my hand on the steering wheel when the boys in orange and black got a hit and cheering loudly in my car.

I don’t give a rip about any of the teams in the post-season, although I may watch a few games. It’s not the same when it isn’t your team fighting it out.

*sigh* Now what? My baseball friend becomes a hockey fan in the off-season. I like hockey, but not with that fever reserved for baseball.

Guess instead, it’s time to start thinking about what in the hell I’m going to write 50,000 words about for the annual NaNoWriMo.

Heh…three years ago I wrote a baseball book……

*Yawn*

Why do shorter weeks always feel longer? This week is interminable and I’m only a day and a half into it. That can’t be a good sign.

It doesn’t help that The Cute Boy™ is bad sick. Like fevery, grumpy, not sleepy, it’s-all-just-not-good kind of sick.

Nothing worse than being sick in the summer. Yes, I know that milestone of “Fall” has passed, but it’s not “officially” Fall until later this month. And the fact that it’s in the nineties here makes me definitely think summer, despite all the “back to school” hoo-hah that’s wandering about. Welcome to Indian Summer. My fave time of year, actually.

The New Mexico State Fair starts this weekend. I distinctly remember getting a day off from school to go to the Fair. Hot, dusty, questionable, but my mom and I always went. You ain’t lived until you’ve fought the bees to eat your honeyed fry bread while watching the Indian dances. Or until you’ve sat in rickety Tingley Coliseum singing along with Freddy Fender. Or Jerry Reed (“east bound and down…loaded up and truckin’…(see, I’m already tapping my toes)). Or yes, Roy Clark, a staple of the rodeo for years.

Ah….I can smell the cotton candy now.

Wish I could get a day off work so’s my mom and I could eat our way through the Fair. Sometimes being a grownup is NO fun.

Then again, I’m meeting a friend for dinner tonight at a Cuban place. Here’s the good part of being a grownup. Sometimes a Mojito cures a lot of whining.

So I guess this is really a blog post full of miscellany. No point. Just a bucketload of thoughts for a Hump Day afternoon.

Enjoy some early Jerry Reed:

What I did on my summer vacation.

By Karen Fayeth

:)

Man oh man….back at work today after a most luverly week off. It took me three days to just relax enough to realize HOW MUCH I needed a vacation.

‘Course it took me three hours back at work to *forget* I ever had a vacation.

By 11:00 I’d already nervously eaten my packed lunch (I do tend toward emotional eating…something I did a lot less of last week when slings and arrows weren’t flying at me from all directions).

By noon I already had to ask someone to stop yelling at me. You know for one full week I never once had to ask someone to cease yelling at me? (Unless you count the meowling four-legged one who does get snippy when the bowl is empty…but that’s justified, IMHO.)

We’d originally planned a fairly elaborate road trip, which would have been wonderful, but at the last minute, my partner talked me into bagging the road trip and having a vacation at home. I was not thrilled about this at first, but he ended up being right (ssshhhh, don’t tell him, okay?)

We managed to get to “those things” on the home list that need to get done but never do. You know what I mean, little improvements to the living space that would be nice, but by the time the weekend rolls around everyone is too exhausted and running errands to even think about it? Right.

So we go those done.

We had a nice sit down breakfast every day.

Bikes were ridden.

Lots of good food was eaten….(I believe I’ve name checked Sodini’s here before….)

Sleep was had. Oh glorious lovely, beautiful, nourishing sleep!

We even played tourists a couple days. In the ten years I’ve lived here do you know I still hadn’t gotten around to walking on the Golden Gate Bridge? Driven over it a zillion times. Been to the fort below the bridge. Been on the Marin side and looked back and took photos, but never once actually walked over the bridge. So we did that. (Crappy iPhone photo at the bottom).

And I read…a bunch. Just for the joy of it. No contracts. No vast emails. Just, books, fiction, enjoyable. Watched some movies.

And mostly I reconnected with my partner. He and I have been running too far too fast. It was nice to just be together. To remember how nice it is to just be with each other. He’s still my favorite person to spend a day doin’ nothing with. For just the pleasure of his smile alone, it’s worth it all.

He took care of some much needed correspondence, I sent off some photos for a contest, and we let the days pace slowly by. God, it was wonderful.

Today I got stuck in a traffic jam on 101. Got to work and was set upon by my over caffeinated program manager, got buried in a mound of papers, and got yelled at.

*sigh*

Here we go again……..

Continuation of a theme

Get ready, the lament that started here continues.

Friday night, was sitting on the red couch, as usual. I was huddled up reading the last and latest installment of Harry Potter (yes, I am perhaps the LAST person on earth to finally get around to reading this exhausting bit of work) when I realized….my bare feet were cold. Being a girl from the desert, shoes fly off my feet at the earliest convenience so barefooted is the norm. And barefooted in the summer is a truly grand treasure for me. My feet, browned by the sun, flip flop tan lines can attest.

But as I sat there, the sun warming the horizon to the west, but my feet were cold. And my bare legs. And suddenly I was seeking out a blanket.

A blanket! In August!

This is not fair. This is still summer! Summer I tell you! It cannot be over! Fall cannot be pushing at the edges! I command the leaves not to change! I demand the sun stay high in the sky until almost 9:00 at night! I require shorts and no shoes!

My beautiful partner keeps reminding me, that old Bay Area lament, “you know the weather here is always the best in October”. Yes, tis true….but I can only enjoy the nice days until, oh, about 6:00 or so because the SUN SETS TOO DANG EARLY in October. It’s not the same. I am a child of summer. I crave the sun. Fall brings darkness, dankness and wet. Soon the rains will come, bringing bone chilling damp cold.

We already started discussing which family we’ll spend the holidays with. The **holidays**!! IN AUGUST!!

It is to weep.

And then, just as I’m lamenting along, trying to cheer myself up I read Petroglyph Paradox today and my friend Natalie tells me that football is on the telly…already. Football!

I can’t take it.

I’m going to may hay while the sun (literally) shines. I’m taking my new bike for a spin….and I’ll hold my legs straight out like a kid and I’ll sweat profusely because today, August 19, 2007 is STILL SUMMER!