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May. 25th, 2014 10:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
auntiemeeshIt was a good day. I kept pecking away at the to-do list until the only thing remaining was sorting/organizing papers. Since all those papers are tucked away in the desk, the urgency to deal with them is almost non-existent. And there are only so many hours in a day, and so much energy to devote to dealing with household stuff.
It was a very nice evening.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ani_no_mouse drove down from Grove City, lyda_pearl got off work at 6:30 and the three of us managed to grill up some sausages, saute some onions and peppers, and hang out in the courtyard for several hours, with LP's BF. Unfortunately, someone invited a whole passel of mosquitoes which eventually drove us inside, but then we had the fun of watching the cats go crazy hunting down the ones that followed us in. I have at least one visible bite on my arm, and I suspect more will pop up before morning, but oh well, such is the reality of outside time.
I listened to the Pirates game in the afternoon, and boy was it a stinker! They had a chance to sweep a four-game series for the first time in eight years or so, but came nowhere even close to actually doing so. I was disappointed right off the hop because Stewart was catching instead of Martin (who knew I'd have a favorite catcher, so weird - when I watched games as a kid, the catcher was such a generic form for me, not even a real player in my mind) and it just went downhill from there. But still, there's something about listening to a ball game on the radio that makes me want to go for a long car ride on a summer evening, windows rolled down to catch the breeze and listen to the announcer share his love of the game. Although, to be frank, most of the time I'll probably stick to checking out the game tracker on the website, in between doing other things. I don't have a car, and I don't actually like car rides, for the most part. But I'm learning to love baseball, after resenting it for many, many years. And that's kind of cool.
My relationship with baseball is a lot more complicated than my relationship with hockey. Hockey is something that I came to for the first time as an independent adult, allowed to make up my own mind about whether it was something I wanted in my life or not. Baseball was foisted upon me for years as a child, watching it on tv (back in the day when you didn't have to have a fancy sports package to watch your local team every night all summer long), listening to it on the radio, hearing it talked about. There were always loyalty issues - my dad grew up in Ohio and was a Reds fans, but we lived in Berks Co. Pennsylvania, smack dab in Phillies territory. I even went through a phase in Junior High where I rebelliously branched out and became a Mets fan. That did not go down well at home. And then I went off to college, even more rebelliously decided that I wanted nothing to do with sports and refused to adopt the Pirates as my favorite team simply because I'd moved into their territory. Somewhere along the line that changed into passively cheering for the Pirates, not really caring that they sucked endlessly.
And then, a year or two ago, feeling bereft and forlorn after another early playoff departure on the part of the Penguins, I decided I'd look into this whole baseball thing, see if I could get the same satisfaction out of being a Pirates fan that I get from being a Penguins fan. So I read a few articles, looked at a few blogs, realized I really didn't know enough about baseball to do more than idly watch it on tv, shrugged my shoulders and settled back down to mourning my Pens. But since then I've picked up a bit here, a bit there, and I feel like I'm at the point now where I know enough to actually follow the game. And that's always the most exciting moment, when you first start following a game and finding out the things that you love about it. I don't know how this relationship with baseball will go. Will it turn into the sort of all encompassing love that I feel for hockey? I suspect it will mellow into a more affectionate sort of relationship, where I have limited expectations of my team, but just enjoy having them around.
It was a very nice evening.
ani_no_mouse drove down from Grove City, lyda_pearl got off work at 6:30 and the three of us managed to grill up some sausages, saute some onions and peppers, and hang out in the courtyard for several hours, with LP's BF. Unfortunately, someone invited a whole passel of mosquitoes which eventually drove us inside, but then we had the fun of watching the cats go crazy hunting down the ones that followed us in. I have at least one visible bite on my arm, and I suspect more will pop up before morning, but oh well, such is the reality of outside time.I listened to the Pirates game in the afternoon, and boy was it a stinker! They had a chance to sweep a four-game series for the first time in eight years or so, but came nowhere even close to actually doing so. I was disappointed right off the hop because Stewart was catching instead of Martin (who knew I'd have a favorite catcher, so weird - when I watched games as a kid, the catcher was such a generic form for me, not even a real player in my mind) and it just went downhill from there. But still, there's something about listening to a ball game on the radio that makes me want to go for a long car ride on a summer evening, windows rolled down to catch the breeze and listen to the announcer share his love of the game. Although, to be frank, most of the time I'll probably stick to checking out the game tracker on the website, in between doing other things. I don't have a car, and I don't actually like car rides, for the most part. But I'm learning to love baseball, after resenting it for many, many years. And that's kind of cool.
My relationship with baseball is a lot more complicated than my relationship with hockey. Hockey is something that I came to for the first time as an independent adult, allowed to make up my own mind about whether it was something I wanted in my life or not. Baseball was foisted upon me for years as a child, watching it on tv (back in the day when you didn't have to have a fancy sports package to watch your local team every night all summer long), listening to it on the radio, hearing it talked about. There were always loyalty issues - my dad grew up in Ohio and was a Reds fans, but we lived in Berks Co. Pennsylvania, smack dab in Phillies territory. I even went through a phase in Junior High where I rebelliously branched out and became a Mets fan. That did not go down well at home. And then I went off to college, even more rebelliously decided that I wanted nothing to do with sports and refused to adopt the Pirates as my favorite team simply because I'd moved into their territory. Somewhere along the line that changed into passively cheering for the Pirates, not really caring that they sucked endlessly.
And then, a year or two ago, feeling bereft and forlorn after another early playoff departure on the part of the Penguins, I decided I'd look into this whole baseball thing, see if I could get the same satisfaction out of being a Pirates fan that I get from being a Penguins fan. So I read a few articles, looked at a few blogs, realized I really didn't know enough about baseball to do more than idly watch it on tv, shrugged my shoulders and settled back down to mourning my Pens. But since then I've picked up a bit here, a bit there, and I feel like I'm at the point now where I know enough to actually follow the game. And that's always the most exciting moment, when you first start following a game and finding out the things that you love about it. I don't know how this relationship with baseball will go. Will it turn into the sort of all encompassing love that I feel for hockey? I suspect it will mellow into a more affectionate sort of relationship, where I have limited expectations of my team, but just enjoy having them around.
