My Thoughtful Spot

alcs 2009

I was lucky enough to have tickets to ACLS game 3 today, for which I gladly ditched work and was at the stadium by noon. Since living in Southern California, I've been to a Division Series, but was happy that it was limited to that for the Angels because the Red Sox won. Well, we all know that the Red Sox did not win the DS, which had a silver lining for me... baseball isn't quite over yet.

That was quite an experience. We all had thunder sticks. It was almost a do or die situation for the Angels, who were down 2-0 going into today's game. There were some great plays. Great pitching. We witnessed the power of the rally monkey. I wouldn't have missed this game for the world.

But when I got home, Dawn informed me there was a shot I might have missed since I didn't catch the game on tv. A shot captured by the Fox camera in the Yankees dugout (there was no corresponding camera in the Angels dugout, providing further evidence that Fox is in the back pocket of Steinbrenner). Once you get over the main "action," look at the guy who is behind Matsui. Yeah, dude. That's exactly what you're seeing.

 
 

saturday night surprise

We had Angels tickets on Saturday, where we saw Brian Fuentes (the new closer) blow a 3 run lead shutout by giving up a three run homer.

Just before that, Daniel said he had something to do after the game, if I wasn't too tired. (Get your minds out of the gutter, people.) It was a 6:05 start, so I'd likely be up for a post-game outing. But I couldn't figure out what it was. We didn't get free wings from the between innings baseball race, no free wings from the Angels getting 10 runs, and no 20% off from CPK for 10 strikeouts by Angels pitchers.

"Where are we going?"

"You'll see..."

He loves stumping me, probably because I always try to figure it out! As we were driving dangerously close to home, he asks if I think I would enjoy a race.

"To the bathroom? Yeah. But I'll win. I'm extremely motivated."

No, no. A go-cart race! Indoors! With helmets and spinouts and laps and a black and white checkered flag and speeds up to 40mph. SURE!

It was a blast! They make you wear a head sock so you don't germify the helmets. You get hot in those helmets! I was totally sweating everywhere. I came in last, of course. It was my first time and I didn't know the course. And there were some younger boys who where very aggressive... bumping and spinning out. I got slowed down by me not trying to hit them! grrr... I'll do better next time!

no such thing as healthy eating at a ballpark

So, in my quest to stay on my horse, I am again slapped in the face with the reality of how hard it truly is. Take, for instance, an innocent trip to a baseball game. The usual baseball fare of beer, nachos, hot dogs, and popcorn, cannot be eaten by an individual who is trying to loose weight or maintain a healthy eating lifestyle. Especially when that individual has season tickets for half of the home games of a season.

Here are the substitutions I have made, but, as always, it requires a fair amount of planning and prep time:

• beer water
• salted peanuts in the shell (amount?) 1 cup of unsalted peanuts in the shell 
• kettle corn/cheesy popcorn pre-popped light microwave popcorn 
• nachos fruit salad 

Keeping with my healthy eating goals, I may choose to have my one (or two) alcoholic beverages at the ballpark, but more often than not, I'd rather go to a happy hour or enjoy wine with dinner. I'm not going to spend my precious alcohol allowance on watered down beer!

I would love to bring in sparkling mineral water, but the park doesn't allow you to bring in outside drinks. You can bring in whatever food you want, but no beverages. Unless they're in a fountain cup, which I don't get.

Anyone have any other ideas for healthy, ballpark-appropriate food I could bring? 

easter with the hooter girls

This Easter will go down in the history books as the oddest one ever. I knew it was going to be very far outside the ordinary at the end of March -- that is when we had draft day for our Angels season tickets and we learned that we would be watching the Red Sox play at the stadium.

For a few weeks, Daniel and I discussed how we could make the weekend have more of an Easter holiday feel. As you may know, Daniel goes all out when cooking for holiday meals, and Easter is no exception. Our usual Easter schedule is: Mass on Good Friday, Vigil Mass Saturday night, eating on Sunday. (It's an all day event.) We couldn't very well eat hot dogs and consider that Easter dinner, so Daniel was going to try to do a few of our favorite dishes that we could enjoy when we got home.

Then we were notified by the Angels organization that they were offering a Sunday brunch before the game. Perfect! We'll do that. My aunt and uncle were also going to the game and they would join us for brunch as well.

I could not have been more disappointed with brunch. The food was the only good thing about it. They were horribly understaffed and needed at least triple the number of servers that were actually there. We had to beg for drinks. Beg for clean plates. Beg for coffee. Beg for champagne refills. Beg for the check. We actually missed the beginning of the game. A restaurant in the ballpark sould be especially attuned to getting people out by game time. Needless to say, I'll never do brunch at Angels Stadium again. At least for a holiday or for a Red Sox start.

The game was as good as it could have been since the Sox lost. I got to see my first live Sox "fight," which was entertaining. Fortunately, no Sox players were ejected. I know a lot of people (especially Angels fans) have a lot to say about what happened and that it wasn't fair. But if you look at the footage, it was the umpire's fault and the Angels over-reacted. Plain and simple. In between half innings, the entire stadium won free wings at Hooters. Cool. We might go; we'll see how the rest of the day goes.

We got home in the afternoon and exchanged Easter baskets. Then we decided to go to Hooters. We had wings, beer, and fries for our Easter dinner. Some of you might be shocked that I, a strong-willed professional woman, would stoop to dine (if you could call it that) at Hooters. But I actually like Hooters. I don't really care about the girls. I've got boobs and I see plenty of boobs and operate on them. Daniel is a gentleman and doesn't stare at the boobs either. The food is pretty good, they have a good selection of beers, and it's not expensive. So when we get free wings at the game, we eat at Hooters.

And this year, we had Easter dinner with the Hooters girls playing musical chairs in the background to Fergie singing "My Humps."

fallen angel

Daniel and I had tickets to the Angels game last night. We're settling into our new seats which are on the left field side of the park. This is actually the home side, unlike most ballpark where right field is where the home team is. I'm not sure why they do that, by the way. New parking, new vendors that we'll have to learn when we go and get our beers, and new seat mates.

As we got into our seats between the third base and the foul pole, we listened to the opening line up for the Angels. They got to the pitcher last, as is the convention: Nick Adenhart. "Who the heck is that?" we asked each other. "Some rookie, I guess. The Angels rarely make any moves in the offseason," we grumbled.

Surprisingly Adenhart pitched a really good game. Excellent, in fact, considering his rookie status and that he was only 22 years old. He had some control issues in the beginning, but didn't allow a single run in his six innings. When he left the field, there was a little applause for his performance; a lot less than I thought he deserved. "He'll have time to prove himself to this tough crowd," I thought. "It's only April 8th."

On my way to work this morning, the radio offered this teaser to make me listen to the commercials: "An Angels player has been killed in a motor vehicle accident this morning." It worked. I didn't change the channel. As some guy blathered on tax resolution services and garage doors, I thought that it must be some minor player -- an unknown. Wonder if I would recognize the name?

I did recognize it. It was Nick Adenhart. Killed in Fullerton, just one town north of Anaheim, by a drunk driver who ran a red light. I gasped. No way. I must have misheard. But they went on with the story. He and two others died from the accident and one more person was in critical condition. The drunk driver fled the scene, but they finally caught him. He was driving on a suspended license. Suspended because of a previous drunk driving offense.

The Angels cancelled the game tonight and rightly so. How could the team focus on playing what is suddenly just a game when one of their own had been tragically killed mere hours before? Torii Hunter (CF) said that Nick's dad spent the morning in the Angels locker room, staring at his son's locker.

Photos courtesy of the OC Register

the postseason

Two days ago, I went to my first postseason game. Red Sox vs. Angels. Normally when I go to Angels Stadium, I support the Halos. But when the Red Sox are in town? I'm a whole new animal. My baseball family, the people I have gotten to know around our season seats during the regular season, had plenty to say about my Mr. Hyde appearance.

The four seats directly to our right are owned by a company, so there are always different people in them. On Wednesday's ALDS Game 1 it was occupied by two guys and their wives. Their only goal, it seemed, was to get completely plastered by consuming only alcoholic beverages during seven innings. (After the seventh inning they don't serve alcohol anymore, so there was no reason for them to stay.) It was very entertaining.

The crowd was completely insane. I've been at Angels stadium when there have been that many people in attendance. A fact that I know thanks to the attendance quizzes they have every game. But this crowd was deafening. They should have issued ear plugs. I'm ashamed to say that the crowd got to me. After the early run scored by the Angels, I was concerned that the relatively weak bats of the Red Sox could not make up just a one run deficit. Thank goodness I'm not a professional ball player!  But my worries were thankfully unnecessary and the Red Sox pulled off a 4-1 win. A two run shot by Jason Bay quieted the crowd down. A bit. There are plenty of places to read a re-cap of the game. I'll refer you to Dawn's post.

Lester pitching with Youkilis covering first in the foreground and the Angels dugout in the background...

Papelbon

we all have to pitch in

The Red Sox are on the brink of being swept by the Angels at home. Even when the Red Sox were in Anaheim and didn't do so well earlier this month, I reminded myself that the Sox always do very well against the Angels at home. But not this year.

Daniel came home a bit early to watch the game while working on his laptop. Here's the conversation we had as he sped through the front door.

Daniel: "I have an offering to the baseball gods. I can't bear to see us get swept."

me: "You bought a goat head?"

Daniel: "Close..." (Pulls out a can from a plastic shopping bag...) "chowder." (and begins to open it.)

me: "You're going to eat it?"

Daniel: "No. It's going on the coffee table."

me: "With the daruma? Oh, that's just for Matsuzaka, right?"

Daniel: "Right. I don't know what to bring out for Beckett."

me: (thinking) "What about the shotgun?" (referencing Beckett's Texas ranch and hunting hobbies.)

Daniel: "I thought of that but didn't want to end up shooting the TV."

me: "That's ok. We could use a new TV anyway."

saturday call

I just finished my last Saturday call as a resident. And since I'm not going to be a trauma surgeon, it was my last Saturday trauma call... EVER. For some reason, people do more stupid things on Saturdays than any other day of the week. So even though it wasn't my last call ever... that's Tuesday... it's still a big deal.

Here are the drive in totals for my last 30 hours of weekend call

• One death from withdrawal of care
• One patient with gun shot wounds (GSWs) leading to me cracking the chest in the ER. We did not save him.
• Two patients who were "victims" of GSWs as part of retaliation for aforementioned death. 
• One butt pus. 
• One appy. 
• Two acute cholecystitis cases.
• One metastatic colon cancer that has grown so big it is nearly causing an obstruction. 
• One kid who flipped his bike (without a helmet), landed on his handlebars, and busted up his spleen. 
• And about half a dozen drunk morons either operating vehicles and crashing them or being terds and getting assaulted.  

Now we're at a baseball game. And I made sure to get a very important companion on the way to my seat. I think I earned at least one of these. They call it a yard, but it's only a half yard. I can drink a yard of margaritas. Don't know if I'll be awake afterwards, but I can...

arrrr, pucker up, matey

We went to the Angels game last night and watched them lose after a spectacular grand slam by some White Sox player in the 8th inning. Some friends were also going to the game yesterday and we wanted to meet up. They had reservations in the Knothole Club, which is exclusively for people who have Club level tickets. We slum it on the terrace level, so the door guy was having nothing of it.

By the time they got seated, it was at a table for six and their party was only four. My friend, ever the smooth talker, convinced the door guy to let us in anyway. After all, we would only spend money, right? So we headed up after the first. The Knothole Club is on the one level higher than our home base, just to the outfield side of the foul pole. It was very neat having a different perspective of the game, even when it means not being as close.

One of the between-inning entertainment bits is the "kiss cam," which I think is pretty standard at baseball stadiums everywhere. They usually focus on a cute couple, wait for them to kiss, and add some kissing sound effects before moving onto the next victims... I mean couple. Towards the end of the little show was what looked like a standard couple. Cute brunette, some dude in an Angels hat. She turned to her partner to kiss him, and her entire eye was covered with a huge bandage. All 37,000 fans in attendance gasped audibly... and then started laughing. Poor thing. I hope she's not scarred for life; externally or internally.

no more free wings

On March 30th, I was back inside a baseball stadium! The smells of beer and peanuts were everywhere. And because it was preseason baseball, everyone who was there really loves the game. It started out with all the people we know and love; Garrett Anderson, Howie Kendrick, Mike Napoli. But when the game score reached 8-0 Angels, we saw people we never even heard of. Which is fine; give them some time in the big stadium!

Last year, there was a deal with Hooters; every time the Angels won a game and scored 10 or more runs, everyone with a ticket had 24 hours to get their free order of wings from Hooters. That happened so many times last year, that we speculated it may not happen this year.

Daniel wasn't able to be there for the game, so when the score for the Angels got to 10, my brother and I decided to bring him a take out order of wings. Free or not. And sure enough, our Hooter girl Jessica confirmed that there is no more free wing deal. She said that too many people would just get the wings and water and nothing else, leave no tips, or both. What she didn't mention was how much money they probably lost as a corporation. But I didn't expect a Hooter girl to theorize about the business model of her employer. ;-)

At that point, we decided that we would institute our own 10-Run Wing deal. Sure, we'd have to pay for them, but it keeps an important tradition alive. There will still be cries of "the winging run is in scoring position" and "free wings! free wings!" And we'll keep the celebration of the win going after the game... at Hooters.