Double N, Double A

What a great rivalry.  Going to college in St. Louis was always fun around baseball time.  My good friend Brigham was a StL native, so the Cubs/Cards thing was always fun.  That was especially true in 98, when McGuire and Sosa were doing the home run thing.

 Anyways, I just grabbed tix for two Cubs/Cards games in May…both of them Standing Room Only.  I  got out of the virtual waiting room and bought four tickets in under 9 minutes, and all that was left was standing room?  Really?!?!?!?  Damn.  Oh, well.  It’ll be a great weekend.

The Cards Virtual Waiting Room doesn’t quite cut it either.  Unlike the Cubs, they don’t show the sold-out games…either that or there weren’t any yet.  However, I didn’t even see a section where they would post the sold-out games.

Cubs win first Cactus League game too!!!!

This post is a bit late (okay…almost two whole months), but I’m still settling in to this whole blogging thing, and finding that the posts are taking me a while to put together.  Maybe we’ll try for some shorter posts.

Anyways, on NYE, we were travelling through Memphis on our way back to Indiana from Texas.  We decided to do NYE on Beale St.  Since we were only coming from Little Rock, we arrived quite early and decided to head over to Graceland.

I’m not quite sure why I expected much more, but in general it was simply disappointing.  From all the stories I had heard about Elvis, I was expecting something rediculously lavish and outrageous to the point of absurdity.  What I found was a normal size home, that resembled nothing more than the home of somebody’s grandparents.  The fact that the decorative style of the house was decidedly “vintage” 70s was something that I had always associated with Graceland, but I guess I just thought it would be more rediculous and much less pedestrian.

Don’t get me wrong, overall I truly enjoyed the visit.  It just struck me as depressing and sad that nobody can just let it all go.  Maybe it was just my expectations and ignorance, but I had always imagined the house was set far off in the country on acres of rolling hills.  Stupid? I don’t know.  Maybe the city of Memphis just kind of grew up around it.  I think the disparity between my expectations and reality lies mostly in the fact that what was once extravagent has now become commonplace, and I didn’t “adjust for inflation”.

Oh well!  Like I said, it was totally worth the trip, if only for the been-there-done-that aspect.  I guess my recomendation for anyone making the visit would be to read up a little bit more before heading out there, maybe take a peek at the area on Google Maps, and just lower your expectatations.

 One last thing.  I had no idea he was buried there, so it kind of came as a ugly shock at the very end of the tour.  It was the sad exclamation point on a depressing tour.

11:17 AM 

Argghhhh!!!  The virtual waiting room is killing me.  I remember “sitting” in this thing for playoff tickets last year and cursing every time another game popped up in the Tickets-No-Longer-Available List.  Calling on the phone is worthless, especially here at work when I’ve got no redial button on the phone.

So, here I sit, watching my screen refresh every fifteen seconds.  At least in the old days, when you waiting IN line for tickets, you could tell how far you were from the front of the line and estimate your chances.  The virtual waiting room would benefit from something similar.  Perhaps some like, “There are 14503 people in front of you.”  I guess that would make too much sense.

 If I ever get in, I’m obviously shooting for weekend games first.  Coming from Fort Wayne, it just makes life a little easier.  Here are the games I’m going to try for first:

• May 31, 2008 Colorado
• June 1, 2008 Colorado
• August 9, 2008 StL
• August 10, 2008 StL
• June 21, 2008 CWS
• June 22, 2008 CWS
• July 26, 2008 FLA
• July 27, 2008 FLA

Once those are unavailable, I’ll go for other weekend games….maybe move to Friday or Monday games…and finally just resolve to scalping.  Damn I hate this waiting room.

11:50 AM

Five games sold out so far…no luck on phone or internet.  The weekend games against the White Sox went first (not surprising), followed by Opening Day, august saturday vs. Cardinals, and Friday game vs. White Sox.

Brewers - March 31
Cardinals - August 9
White Sox - June 20, 21, 22

1:08 PM

Over two hours so far with nothing to show, except the loss of a couple more Cardinal games:

Brewers - March 31
Cardinals - August 9, 10; September 21
White Sox - June 20, 21, 22

I don’t have any meeting until 3PM, so I guess I’m good till then.

2:55 PM

Wooooooooooohoooooooo!…and just barely under the gun for my 3:00 meeting.  I picked up four ticket for the Saturday, May 10th Arizona game.  It was NOT easy.  For the many games I tried, there were hardly any contiguous seats…and not much available at all for the weekend games.  I also didn’t know that you can only get tickets for a single game at a time.  I tried to go back to the schedule to pick another game, but it put my right back into the damned waiting room.  Ugh.  Oh, well.  At least I’ve got four tickets to a single game…better than nothing.  Here’s the sold out games right now:

Brewers - March 31
Cardinals - August 8, 9, 10; September 20, 21
Giants - July 12
White Sox - June 20, 21, 22

4:45PM

Alright!  Came back from my meeting and got two more tickets for Aug. 24 against the Nats!  Lot’s more games sold out too:

Brewers - March 31
Cardinals - August 8, 9, 10; September 19, 20
Diamondbacks - May 10
Giants - July 12, 13
Marlins - July 26
Mets - April 21
Nationals - August 23
Phillies - August 30
Pirates - May 17; August 2
Rockies - May 31
White Sox - June 20, 21, 22

Happened to be passing through Little Rock as I explained in previous post, so before we headed toward Memphis, the gal and I decided to head to the William J. Clinton Presidential Library. I had never been to a presidential library before. In fact, I don’t think I had ever considered going to one before. Clinton was really the first president who served while I was old enough to care or understand what was really going on in the world, so maybe that had something to do with it.

We were able to walk from our hotel downtown, so we headed over on foot after breakfast. The grounds are fairly hilly, the streets are lined with trees (which were all lit up with lights the night before), and the view of the building is quite impressive as your walking up. It’s all set just south of downtown right on the river, and has a city-park feel to it. The most interesting aspect of the building is the architectural design of the East wing of the building which is suspended at least one story in the air on a large single support column.

If you so desire, the tour starts out with a quick movie that is delivered by President Clinton himself. There are also replicas of the cabinet room and the oval office as they were during his presidency. You are free to wander through the cabinet room all you want, but truly it’s fairly boring. The two interesting parts about the cabinet room were perusing the labels on the back of every chair indicating which cabinet member sat where (e.g. Secretary of Defense). Another interesting piece of trivia was the fact that the back of the President’s chair rises 2″ higher than all of the other chairs. The Oval Office replica is off-limits to wandering, so you can only view from roped off areas on the side. Quick thoughts: too many knick-knacks and horrible decorations.

The main focus of the library lies in the large gallery housed in the suspended portion of the building. The view from the second floor down the gallery is great. The large window at the end of the room lights up the entire hall, but I imagine it would look great in the evening with lights as well. The shelves that line each side of the gallery contain numbered boxes full of archived documents. I don’t remember what the guide said off the top of my head, but I think he said that only ~15% of the entire Clinton archives had been logged and boxed like this. I guess eight years of paperwork can really add up. I wonder what the Bush presidency will end up producing. The second floor contains window-boxes full of stuff like Bill’s saxophones, that wierd looking piece of artwork in the picture to the left, and other pieces of memorabilia. Other than the view, the second floor was quite boring, and I think we spent a total of 10 minutes walking through.

The first floor is where all the interesting exhibits can be found. The gallery is dominated by a time line of eight large boards, each of which documents a single year of the Clinton presidency. I found this to be the most interesting part of the library. Going through each board, it was both nostalgic and sobering to be reminded of many of the events that occurred. Bill’s presidency spanned the eight years of my life that encompassed both high school and college, so revisiting some of those events was similar to revisiting that part of my life. The back of each of these panels displayed letters to the president and his wife from all sorts of people (mostly famous), and those were interesting too.

To each side of these panels were a series of enclaves, which documented in detail a specific area of Clinton’s presidency. For instance, an entire enclave would be dedicated to Foreign Affairs, Education, or Health Care. These displays were filled with photos, documents, and televisions blaring out video clips related to the topic of that enclave. With at least one video blaring from each enclave, walking down the gallery was slightly over-stimulating.

In all, I would have to say that it was a worth-while adventure, and I’d recommend any body to drop by, if they’re in the area. At $7 a head, it was worth it.

For the record, I consider Christmas to be the end of a year, because it’s just a nice way to cap it off. More importantly, however, I usually get the entire week between Christmas and New Year’s off, and I guess I just like to think that I start my new year with a week off rather than consider the start of the new year to be my first day back at work. Perhaps it’s just a silly mental game I play, but it works out well for me.

This year, my girlfriend’s brother needed a lift back to Texas. It’s a long story, but he needed a lift back to Fort Hood, so we drove him out there. We did it straight through on the way out, but on the way home we had some time for some sight seeing, whether by choice or not.

We headed out of Fort Hood shortly after breakfast and some football. Our late start left us no choice but to stop in Little Rock, AR for the night. Truthfully, I was a little bummed. I really wanted to make it to Memphis, but it just wasn’t happening. We booked a room at the downtown Marriot, settled in, and ventured out to find some food.

We ended up eating right downtown on Clinton Presidential Ave. in a great little pizza place called Gusano’s Pizzeria, and heading next door to a dueling piano bar called Ernie Bigg’s, when the pizza joint closed down. Both of these places advertise themselves as Chicago-style joints. Gusano’s claims to serve Chicago-style pizza, and Bigg’s claims to be a Chicago-style dueling piano bar. I wasn’t aware that the dueling piano tradition was rooted in Chicago, but who am I to argue. I guess it was the “Chicago” part of town…maybe a bit like Chinatown, but for Chicagoans. I don’t know, and I didn’t even notice at the time. Perhaps the double dose of Chicago imitation won over my heart due to my suburban Chicago roots, but the gal and I had a great time.

In the morning, we had some breakfast at a the Boulevard Bread Co. in a place called the River Market. The market is a medium-sized building with many shops along the outer ring with tables in the middle to eat and socialized. The little cafe we ate at appeared to be run by a young girl in her early thirties, and it had a very relaxed, eco-friendly feel. I recommend it for breakfast, despite the fact they had run out of bagels.

If that wasn’t enough, we finished off our Little Rock visit with a tour of the William J. Clinton Presidential Library, but I’ll save that for another post. In all, despite my initial disappointment, we had a really great time in Little Rock, and I’d recommend stopping in for at least a night for anyone passing through.

Occasionally over the last couple of years, my dad and I have been heading out to a shooting range called Willow Slough to do some trap shooting. It’s a lot of fun, and there’s much less walking and boredom. This year, my dad’s friend Bob joined us. My dad is a damn good shot, but it always takes me a little while to find my groove again.

My dad was never a big-time hunter, but he would go from time to time when I was younger. I joined him a handful of times, when the two of us would join his friend Van and his son Eric. The four of us would get together maybe twice a year: once for a Chicago Bears game (my dad was a season ticket holder) and once for hunting. Typically, Eric and I would end up hunting squirrels for a while, get bored by our ineffectiveness, and end up firing at cow pies in a field somewhere.

Outside of that, there was a single duck hunting excursion and some trips to a place called Birdland, which was a private bird conservatory owned by another friend of my dad. Of course, there’s also the muskrat eradication program my dad administers with a .22 out of my old bedroom window, but perhaps it’s best not to delve to deeply into that, considering we don’t exactly live in unincorporated territory.

My dad was also a member of Duck’s Unlimited, which is a wetlands conservation organization, whose members just happen to be hunters. Sometimes you have to wonder about their motives. Is the goal to maintain wetlands or to provide protected hunting grounds for its members. In all, I think it’s a great organization, and if nothing else, I have some great memories of the yearly local banquets, where members would donate large amounts of game meat. These banquets are where I learned to love venison and can vividly remember eating it right off the grill as my dad’s friend Van grilled it up.

Neither my dad nor I really hunt anymore, though we are getting back together with Van and Eric for a walleye fishing trip on Lake Erie this summer. There were always guns in our house, and in a way I thank my dad for that. They were always locked up, but he taught my sister and I the proper way to handle a gun, how to shoot, and how to do it safely.

Well, after many years of putting it off, I finally reserved a domain. Now…what to do with it?  One can never be too sure, but the scattered details of a plan involves posts on anything that interests me.  That could range from details of recent travels, rantings about random stuff, descriptions of projects, music, the Cubbies, and whatever the hell else I think will sufficiently pollute this site (…and the internet as a whole) with rubbish that no one will likely ever read.

Factoring in the banality of subject matter, randomness of topics, and my pension for quickly aborting projecs, this should really be a fantastic mess.  Enjoy