I have blown off the season-ending Cubs game at Wrigley Field in favor of doing all the things I needed to do at home today. This was probably a good choice overall. :)

Update: And since I've now gotten everything off to quadrivium for the GAFilk songbook and continued to debug my procedures for recording directly to Cubase without requiring help in the studio, I'd say that makes it a productive afternoon.

It also meant that I could get a nice lunch at Red Robin with daisy_knotwise, Katie, and Julie (any place that will give them balloons is always good) and got a couple of new pairs of jeans and a new shirt before heading off to ConClave next weekend.

If you had two innings in the "How long will Bill and Katie stay at the baseball game?" pool, you're a winner!

It actually wasn't too cold, as the wind wasn't in our faces, but Katie started wanting to leave her seat in the top of the first inning. Substantially aerobic exercise ensued before I gave up after two inning, fervently hoping that there would be a bus to take us back to the parking lot.

After about 15 minutes, there was. Fortunately.

Katie wants to go to a Cubs game. I had planned to blow off the Cubs game tonight, because it's cold and I have things that I could be doing. But I'm running out of Cubs games this season and they're giving away Fergie Jenkins bobblehead dolls tonight. And the tickets are a dead loss if I don't use them.

So we're going to bundle up and head down to Wrigley Field. And if Katie wants to leave earlier, well, I really won't mind.

Wish us luck.

daisy_knotwise has spent most of the afternoon in the hotel room with a variable number of napping children. The count of children was constant at two, but the number napping seems to have been variable. The Dealers' Room is going to close in a few minutes, at which time I'll go rescue her and we can get some dinner.

I'm thinking that an afternoon in the room with the girls wasn't the most exciting way to spend it.

*sigh*

On the other hand, I was able to watch the Cubs/Cards game reports on ESPN GameCast. Cards won 2-1. :)

shsilver left tonight's Cubs game after the seventh inning stretch. Absent his conversation, I only made it to the end of the inning before heading home. I didn't miss much.

daisy_knotwise had asked me to pick up some Tilex on the way home, so I ran by the Jewel. I also picked up a few containers of yogurt and some rice pudding that was on sale. And since soda was still on sale and the sales tax rate goes from the food rate to the general merchandise rate tomorrow, I decided it was an opportune time to fill 'er up.

I went to the self-checkout. The woman next to the register suggested that I should use the other self-checkout lane with the belt, because it would be "easier". I pointed out that it would not be easier, because I intended to scan one carton of soda five times, rather than removing each of the identical cartons from the cart and replacing them. She said, "But then I have to press a button."

I said, "Yes, that's correct," and proceeded to use the self-checkout lane that I'd intended to use in the way that I'd intended to use it. And she did press the button in reasonably good time.

Easier for who, I wonder. Well, no, I don't actually.

Anyway, I carefully studied the receipt and the amount of sales tax on it was way too large for what I'd just bought. So off I went to the Service Desk, where I mentioned to the nice lady there that the amount of tax was clearly wrong, because the sales tax rate doesn't go up until tomorrow, She agreed that was true and we spent five minutes futzing around with it before she finally decided to just scan a pack of soda and see what came up for tax.

It was clearly ten percent, which was clearly wrong. Apparently someone had decided to enter the new rate and go home.

They finally ended up giving me all of the tax on the purchase back.

Which was nice of them. I would have settled for what I didn't owe the State of Illinois.

I wandered down to Wrigley Field today to watch the Cubs/Mets game, meeting the Donats there. Sadly, Carlos Zambrano melted down completely under a barrage of singles (and the occasional triple), going 3 1/3 innings and giving up four runs. Since the Cubs only scored one run, four runs were more than enough to produce another Cub loss.

Now, the good news from my point of view is that the Cardinals are now up by ten games in the Central. :)

But the Cubs have morphed into a pretty ugly team this year.

Assuming that it's not rained out -- which is always a possibility, given what I see out the window -- I'll shortly be heading down to Wrigley Field with Steve Green, this year's TAFF delegate, to meet Sam and Bonnie and watch the Cubs play the Nationals.

Yesterday, the weather was fine. The Cubs, however, sucked, losing to the Nats 15-6.

Today, the weather sucks.

We'll see about the Cubs.

As a baseball fan of long standing who is not from the New York area, it's pretty much mandatory to hate the Yankees. Even if the Cardinals did beat them in the World Series in the first baseball season that I ever paid attention to. :) But hating the Yankees is just one of those things that you have to do.

Then they go and do something really decent like this.

Oh my.

The Cardinals have just acquired Matt Holliday from the A's to be inserted into the outfield mix. This sounds like good news. :)

Having watched the Home Run Derby tonight, it strikes me that there's the prospect of a very frightening episode of "My Friends, Tigger and Pooh" lurking out there somewhere.

bedlamhouse and ladyat came up to visit today, go to the Cubs / Cards game with me, and pick up Gordy's guitar. Sadly, the Cards lost, but Bill and Brenda liked it better that way, so it wasn't a total loss. :)

Tomorrow, we'll all head up to Picnicon.

So as I was standing on the concourse eating my dinner at one of the condiment stands -- dinner consisting of a foot-long hot dog with everything except peppers and a pepperoni calzone, the dinner that nutrition forgot! -- I was more than a bit surprised to see someone walk up to the dispenser and squirt ketchup onto his Connie's deep-dish pizza.

I don't eat ketchup on pizza. Katie -- who eats ketchup on Katie -- doesn't eat ketchup on pizza.

This guy, well...

Well, just as I picked up the phone to call daisy_knotwise at abour 7:15 to tell her that I was just about to give up and come home, because there was no way they were going to start this game before 9 PM, they announced that the game had been called on account of rain.

Up until then, I was dry. After standing in the rain for half an hour waiting for a bus, not so much.

*sigh*

Last night, I was up really, really late finishing up the project that daisy_knotwise and I have been working on for Concertino. Today, I woke up moderately early when the friend / contractor who handles our furnace and air conditioner called to come over and check out the AC. (Report: all's well for another year.)

Tonight, I am going to the Cubs / Sox game at Wrigley Field. To what looks to be a rather damp Friendly Confines. Glub.

And tomorrow after work, we are starting our drive to Concertino. After I give a demo of HSF to a developer who is going to do some work on it.

I'm hoping to be conscious for all this. :)

I'd planned for some time to try to take daisy_knotwise, Katie, and Julie to the Cubs game today, because it was the game where they're giving the kids stuffed Cubs bears from the Build-a-Bear Workshop. The forecast had been for good weather, so waking up to dark skies and cool temperatures was unnerving. But it was a 3:10 PM start time for TV, so by the time we actually got to the park about 1:30 PM, the weather had turned gorgeous.

What I'd underestimated was the degree of difficulty of dealing with two children under 3 years old. Katie decided she wanted to go exploring before the game, so she headed out with me trailing behind. I saw parts of the ballpark I'd not seen in years. I also now know where to buy snow cones and kettle corn should the need arise. (It didn't today.)

I got Katie back to our seats and then discovered that I'd forgotten my pen. This resulted in a trip down to the now-crowded concourse to buy a pen to keep score with. Katie was rather cowed by the crowd and was happy to hold my hand. And back to the seats we went for the opening pitch.

Gretchen had bought popcorn and a pretzel for the girls, both of which were quite popular. Unfortunately, Katie didn't want to stay in her seat, while Julie really wanted to fall asleep, but wasn't able to manage it in the general tumult. After three and a half innings of bipartisan squirming, I decided that it was time to give up. We were walking down the stairs on the way out just as Fontenot hit a triple to give the Cubs a 3-0 lead.

It was a beautiful day for a ballgame. But I think we'll wait until the girls are just a wee bit older before we try this again. :)

daisy_knotwise and I headed down to Wrigley Field today to meet Sam and Bonnie for brunch in the Stadium Club (courtesy of our friend, Bob) followed by the Cubs / Astros game. Gretchen had to head home early to rescue our babysitter who had a softball game late in the day, but the remaining three of us stuck it out in the face (literally) of a chilly breeze.

Whenever Sam left his seat, the Astros would score. Whenever Bonnie left her seat, the Cubs would score. So with the Cubs trailing 6-3 going to the bottom of the ninth, Bonnie went to the ladies room.

The Cubs scored two runs and had runners on second and third with two out when Geovany Soto lined out to the third baseman to end the game.

Well, it almost worked.

Well, if they hadn't delayed the start of last night's Cubs game by 35 minutes waiting for a phantom thunderstorm that apparently missed the ballpark -- we had about two minutes of rain and they covered the field at about 6:55 PM -- they might have finished the game on schedule. As it was, the rain arrived in earnest after the seventh inning and I left. They played another half-inning before covering the field for the final time. But the Cubs won and my fantasy first baseman hit two homers, so I did ok. :)

The official messiest food at the park has to be the chili dog nachos that are new this year. Burp.

My changes to the initialization for our tab control all seem to be working fine, so I've checked them into ClearCase. Yay!

I have, I think, successfully preserved my about-to-expire United Mileage Plus miles by having lunch at the pizzeria across the street and paying for it with my Discover Card that's linked to the Mileage Plus dining plan. We'll see if the miles show up in my account. And it was pretty decent pizza.

jeff_duntemann is joining us for dinner tonight. He must like us, because the menu for tonight is "leftovers". :)

Yesterday, I had planned to go to the Cubs game. The weather was beautiful, the pitching matchup was excellent, and I discovered I had a Capricon meeting. Oops.

So I swapped my plans around to go to the game tonight.

Are you surprised to hear that it's been raining all day? And that thunderstorms are predicted this evening?

As far as I know, they're still planning to try to play the game tonight. We'll see how this goes.

And I'll shortly be off to the ballpark to see tonight's Cubs / Giants game. Games two days in a row is a bit much, but it's the only time that the Marlins and the Giants are in town.

Also, I'm going to one game in the entire month of June, so...

I went off to the Cubs game today, leaving daisy_knotwise and the girls at home. It was a gorgeous day for a ballgame, which was especially nice as the Cubs retired Fergie Jenkins and Greg Maddux's number 31 today. The Cubs beat the Marlins in a game where Lou Piniella looked about as disgusted as I've ever seen him. That was after he had to take Zambrano out because he'd tweaked his hamstring beating out a bunt for a hit. Since he was leading off, I'm going to assume he was bunting for a hit, not exactly what Piniella had in mind. It did turn out to be the lead run after Derrek Lee's grand slam, but I think Piniella would rather have a healthy Zambrano.

I hurried back from the game so Gretchen and I could pack up Katie and Julie and take them to the park. Because there's something really nice about two little girls happily giggling as Daddy pushes them in the swing.

The Cubs cleverly canceled Sunday night's Cubs / Cardinals game, because it's hard to play in a lake. Today, it's not raining steadily so I'm guessing the game will go on tonight.

I plan to be there. This may make me dumber than the Cubs, given the expected temperature.

Maybe the wind will be blowing out.

The problem that I had going into this year's baseball draft was that two of the relief pitchers that I had counted on for my returning team had been carded in the extra (XB) card set which we don't actually play with under the current rules. This is what happens when you draft a lefty specialist apparently, even if he appeared in a great many games.
( Damage control pitching... )

It's time for our annual APBA baseball draft tomorrow and I think I've finally finished my research, since tomorrow is now today. We're shifting format so that those of us with less time can play the entire season on the computer, which should make it possible for me to keep this up.

Now I just have to see what I end up with. As it turns out, I (barely) qualified for last year's playoffs and I'm drafting fifth out of eight teams. I wonder what I'll have a shot at by the time it gets to me...

We're holding the annual draft on Sunday and one of our managers is trying to finish up the computer season run. It's being entertaining out there, as I'm not sure that all the options are quite set up correctly in the computer.

Maybe I'll invite him to swing by with the laptop. :)

The Tampa Bay Rays are on their way to the World Series. With all due respect to my friends who are Red Sox fans, the Red Sox have won enough lately. (If they were the Cardinals, I'd feel differently. :) )

But it's nice to see a young, talented team manage to emerge from the AL East, certainly making the oddsmakers a bit perplexed.

And it's also nice to see baseball punditry thoroughly deprived of their preferred scenario with "Manny Returning To Fenway".