California is Burning

(Photo from Huffington Post) - www.huffingtonpost.com , don't hate me Republicans...

Sooo, California is on Fire again, it happens about every year this time, but these ones are pretty north of me. But it never ceases to amaze me how huge these fires are, when they're talking about thousands of acres burning.


Note, I live wayyy, down south there, by those Little League World Series champions, (ok not that far down there, but closer to them than the fires.) It's about an hour and a half north up burning LA.

Another Softball Season comes to an End

And another championship is in the books!

(Left to Right starting in the Back Row)
Me, Marcus, Mark, D-Ron, Steve, Jamey (crouched), Plato.
-Front Row Heather, Ashley, E-Fong and Kim.

Coach Jamey accepting his Coach of the Year trophy, only to be upstaged by some non-sense from Heather and E-Fong on our team!

More great times with some great friends, and in the mean time we were winning some softball games. Didn't start the day off well, as we needed to win 2 of 3 to pull it out, and we lost our first game, so we made a long day of it out there, but eventually pulled out the victory!

Cubs Padres Game

Ok so last Tuesday we got to catch the Cubs and Padres game, not only was it against my Cubbies which makes the Padres almost bearable(haha pun..) but we had PHENOMENAL seats. For getting MVP of my softball league last year, we got Box/Field level seats to any game I picked. So of course I picked this game against the Cubs. Little did I know, these seats were going to be First Row! We were right up front, literally steps from the Cubs Bullpen.

Here is the view from our seats, literally right next to the Bullpen, watching Aaron Heilman and Sean Marshall warm up in the pen as Dempster was busy blowing the game out on the field.

Here is how close I was to the bane of my existence and of my fantasy team this year, Milton Bradley. Literally he is everything that I hate about baseball, immense talent, but just a big fat contract, doesn't hustle, doesn't back up a play and just doesn't even seem to care about the game. Case and point, and I really wish I could find the Kyle Blanks inside the park homerun YouTube video, but anyhow he could have easily been stuck at least at third if Milton would have backed up the play. It was horrible. Except I saw my first Inside The Park Home Run.

Me and Ash, posing in front of our seats.
Great times at the ball park except that the Cubbies lost to the lowly Padres!

The Weather Here is Sweet!

I can't help it, I find myself amused by these Peyton Manning Commercials! Combines my hotel background, and a San Diego comment, he just cracks me up.

Perspective

Just read this little quote in an article today which really makes you put into perspective when you're pressing for that 3 dollar an hour raise to make sure you don't go without HBO this year!

Multiply the population of the US by three. That’s how many people around the world live on about a dollar a day.

Do it again and now you have the number closer to $2. About forty percent of the world lives on $2 or less a day.

What’s that like? What happens to you when you have two dollars a day to live on. It’s almost impossible to imagine. I mean, $2 is the rent on your apartment for about 35 seconds. $2 buys you one bite of lunch at a local restaurant...

And yet, two billion people survive on that sort of income.

Congrats Lil Blue

So Lil Blue, driven off the lot with 7 miles on him, has now officially reached 77,777 miles. Just a little shout out to my Honda Civic and the good times we've had. Multiple trips from San Diego to Salt Lake, countless episodes with friends, dozens of moves. Dings, dents, scratches full on accidents. We've been through quite a bit, but it is still getting 30ish Miles Per Gallon and keeps on truckin day in and day out with no problems. (Knocks on Wood.) Just a happy little milestone for a good friend!

A Quick Thank You

A quick thank you to my parents for having a Dart Board in our basement and thus making me not entirely inept at all bar games. I was at least able to hold my own in a game of darts against some friends last night... Pool on the other hand, we have a whole different story there, I'm going to need some practice!

Pat Green Concert HoB

Last night we had the pleasure of going to see Pat Green at House of Blues downtown. Me, Ashley, Jamey and Andrea all headed down to see the show. Such a great venue down there it's a smaller area, but everywhere you are is close to the stage. We were upstairs, but front-row of the upstairs so it seemed like we were right next to him.

No Camera's were allowed in, so didn't get any photo's out of the deal. He played a great set, including all of his hits except for Country Star.
He wrapped of with "Wave on Wave"
And included, "Baby Doll", "Feels just like it should", "What I'm For" and "3 Days" are some of the songs that you may recognize.

Also, toward the end he gave a shout-out to Jake Peavy former pitcher for the Padres, and on the DL, but was traded to the Chicago White Sox, who was in the crowd (I didn't see him, he was downstairs in a VIP booth somewhere.) But Pat gave him a farewell from San Diego, and everyone went nuts.

Farewell Honkey Tonk

So the other weekend we had a party where we bid a good friend of ours farewell, or at least, an until later.

Adam is the one sporting the Pistol Pete jersey, our Right-Center Fielder, 3 hitter and all around great guy. Adam is from Alabama, and is now moving to South Carolina with his girlfriend who is going to head to Law School out there.

Adam is literally one of the best hitting softball players I have ever had the pleasure of playing with, he has a natural inside out swing which could just crush the ball to Right Center field, and always kept the ball on a line and didn't pop-up despite being 6'3'' 250.

Anyhow, we had a little shindig for him the other weekend, at Kate Sessions Park in San Diego which was pretty amazing.
A new game I learned at this party is called "Ladder Ball".
Or, from Wikipedia -
Ladder toss (also called hillbilly horseshoes, hillbilly golf, redneck golf, ladder ball, testicle toss and many other names) is a lawn game played by throwing a bolo of two golf balls connected with a rope at a ladder. Different rungs of the ladder are worth different point values, with the goal of the game being to get exactly (and not over) 21 points.

Points per rung can vary, but all three rungs will uniquely be assigned a value of 1, 2, or 3 points. In one variety the top is worth 1, middle is 2, and bottom is 3.

Couple of action shots here of me and Steve displaying some great form, and Ashley and Mark at the other end observing our tosses. I was a little rough in learning this game, takes a bit of touch, some luck in the bounce, and rotation of the balls to get hooked on the ladder. But nonetheless a really good time!

We followed that up with a tournament of wiffle-ball, but overall some really good times with some really good friends and we'll miss Adam.