New Camera and St. Louis Game

Hello friends,
wow, its a been a while since ive written anything, which is sad i guess, but ive been super busy lately. anyways, a little while ago i decided i needed a digital camera. I was taking a sailing class and i am traveling a bunch this fall, mostly to sporting events of course, and i am planning on doing a bunch of picture diary type things of college football games i go to for our college football pool, and so i got a camera. now, i am not very good at taking pictures of things, and i have no idea how to do all the fancy things on my camera so i needed some practice before the big games i will be "covering" this fall. so i took my new camera on my trip to st louis to practice taking pictures at the cardinals braves game that i went to with some friends from purdue, so here is my first group of pictures with my new camera


This is the very first picture i took with my camera, its chipper jones batting. He had a pretty good game.


The upper left field bleachers at new busch stadium is called big mac land. Its called that because Mark McGuire used to hit tons of baseballs into that section after fueling himself up on McDonalds hamburgers (and steroids). Its kind of sad, all of my favorite players growing up, Canseco, McQuire, Giambi, Tejada, were all a bunch of steroid users, i should have picked favorite players like petey does, 5'6" 150 lb middle infielders, no one ever accused david eckstein of being on roids....


Here is a picture of the peanuts i got talked into buying, i had originally decided i didnt want peanuts, because i had eaten a whole bag of them the night before at the wichita wingnuts game i went to, but i was at the concession stand and i said "one beer please" and the lady said "one beer, and you wants some peanuts too dont you?" and i said "...yes" after about a half seconds pause, and she said "wow, that didnt take much convincing, i should have sold you something expensive like a cadillac" and i said "i like peanuts...."

Here is a picture of albert pujols batting, he had a very good game as well, i was happy that both him and chipper had good games, normally when i go to games the big stars always play like crap


hey look, i figured out how the zoom on my camera works, focusing is an entirely different matter...


I took this picture in the second inning cuz the stands were still pretty much empty, it was like i was at a dodgers game

This was a cool apartment building across the street from the stadium, i think it would be pretty awesome to live downtown there and be able to walk across the street to the games like that, but then i remembered it was 94 degrees with 90% humidity and i changed my mind about how awesome it would be to live in st louis, you should never sweat through sporting events you arent personally participating in


Look, its the leaning tower of Pisa! ok, actually PJ just cant hold his camera level.... but it is a pretty cool building, its called the millennium hotel because it was built 1000 years ago.


In case you cant read it the guys shirt says "Id rather have a sister in a whore house than a brother thats a cardinals fan" which i thought was funny but perhaps a bit extreme, i wonder what his sister feels about that


Here is albert pujols rounding third after hitting a weak little homerun, you can see chipper was not at all impressed with it

The scoreboard says pujols' homerun went 402 feet, which is a huge disappointment, i dont want to see him hit little bloop shots that barely clear the wall, i want to watch him hit monster 500 plus foot shots like the one that he hit off brad lidge in the playoffs that one year, the one that turned lidge into a mental case and completely de-railed his career, although i think he might be doing better now


I took this picture right after pujols hit his homerun so i could show how weak it was, it landed in that little dirt area between the stands and the wall above the bud light sign, im pretty sure the wall used to go right up to the stands but then they started testing for steroids and so they decided to shrink the fields a bit to give all the clean hitters a bit more help, im just kidding, i made all that up, the next day in my softball game i hit a homerun that hit off the top of the fence so i shouldnt tease pujols too much about his weak home run, i should tease him more because his name is albert


Every several innings little grounds crew guys would scurry on the field and drag the dirt to make it nice, apparently cardinals managment values these guys more than the players because while they are smoothing the dirt this intimidating character patrols the field, i bet if you were to try to harass the dirt rakers this guy would probably hit you with his little stick hanging from his belt


from our seats you could see the arch and some other wrinkly looking building

In between the 8th and 9th innings all the fans were getting up and leaving, and i thought "wow, this really is like going to sporting events in LA


Oh, perhaps that was why all the fans were moving away, the enormous rainstorm that was coming from behind me that i didnt see, i apologize to st louis for insinuating they have bad fans

I thought the rain delay was kind of fun, our seats were covered so we didnt get wet, and i had never been to a rain delay before so i was excited to watch the little grounds crew guys roll out the tarp, which i must say, they did a very good job


i thought this bit looked pretty fun


This was my favorite guy on the grounds crew, everyone else had left the field but this guy stayed to make sure the tarp was stretched out perfectly

and then after making sure the tarp was sufficiently stretched out, he stood on the tarp making sure it wouldnt blow away, i appreciate the guys dedication, everyone else had long left the field, although i wonder what he thought he was doing that the enormous metal tube was not capable of...


Apparently the tarp works pretty well because after they pulled it off there was a huge puddle on the ground, the one guy in the picture is using a little broom to push water towards the drain behind the infield


Id like to think this is my same favorite little grounds crew guy, he thinks to himself "i am going to help the drain by pushing more water towards it", give that guy a raise

i tried to take a picture of the scoreboard after the game, the braves added 3 runs in the 9th after the delay to win 8-4, which i very much enjoyed, but while i was taking the picture the scoreboard image switched on me all of a sudden which is why it looks dumb, i mean im not a great photographer to begin with, i need the scoreboard to behave for me

Oh man! the international bowling museum!! unfortunately i had to drive back to wichita or i would have definately hit that up "This is my tournament!! This is my tournament!! you see these patches?!"

So those are all my pictures from my trip to st louis, there was one picture i really wanted that i was not able to get, on the drive there i passed Emporia State University, and they a big sign when you go by that says "1993 Debate Team National Champions" which cracked me up and i really wanted a picture of it, and so i had planned on taking a picture of it on the way back, unfortunately, at that time i was too busy trying to avoid getting run off the road by Drunky McSwerveson and i wasnt able to get my camera out and take a picture on time, and since it was already 230 in the morning i didnt really feel like turning around and driving by it again just to take the picture...

umbrellas, love, and some other random stuff

hello friends,
so it rains here all the time, well, thats only partially true, i dont think it normally rains this much here but supposedly we just had the rainiest may in the history of wichita or something like that, i heard it rained 9 inches this past weekend, which is kind of ridiculous actually, now this isnt really that big of a deal, i like rain, and almost every night there have been awesome thunderstorms, and so i open up the blinds on my enormous bedroom window, and i lay there and watch the lightning and the rain which i enjoy, it gives me something to do while im laying there not falling asleep... so what is the problem with all of this rain? well, there is the fact that i keep having softball games and tourneys postponed and canceled, which is lame, but not what i am going to talk about right now, the real problem is i keep getting soaked walking from my car to work in the mornings, for whatever reason, my assigned parking lot is no where near the building i work in, its over a 5 minute walk (it took over 10 minutes earlier this year the day after i started doing squats at the gym again) so that is plenty of time to get wet, even when walking quickly, and you are probably saying, "you idiot, why dont you just use an umbrella?" well, i dont own an umbrella, ive never really had a need to, back in new mexico it never really rains that much, and whenever it does if you have to go out you just hurry between the car and wherever you are going and its not really a big deal. and even when i was at purdue, it rained more but it still wasnt a big deal, cuz i could always just take the tunnels or hurry from building to building and it wasnt that bad. but like i said, it rains all the time here, and i have a nice long walk from my car, and then i have to site in my cubicle (a whole other issue but we're not going to talk about that) with my work clothes all wet, and every time this happens i think to myself, i really need to invest in an umbrella, but then of course the weather always gets nicer and i forget about it until it rains on me again, but this past weekend i set out to find one, and i found lots of them, everywhere i looked had tons of those little compact pop out ones, you know, the kind that fold up all small and you push a button and they pop open automatically, and they are real nice and small and practical and convenient and utterly unappealing to me. the kind i want is going to be tall, preferably black, with a curved wooden handle, a nice classy umbrella, because to me an umbrella is so much more than keeping the rain off of me, i want to be able to lean on it or use it like a cane when its not raining, and maybe i'll twirl it around jauntily as i walk along with a folded up newspaper under my other arm. sadly, i did not find what i was looking for, although dillard's had one that was pretty close, the only problem was i didnt care for the wood of the handle, it was really light and specked, it almost looked like cork, it needed to be stained a nice dark color, so my search for the perfect umbrella continues and i guess i will just keep getting soaked until i find it, which in my opinion is much preferable to those silly little compact pop up things that everyone around here but me seems to like
now the guy from the travelers insurance commercials has a nice umbrella, although arguably its a little big...

so the other day i saw the new indiana jones moovie, which i enjoyed, and i have to say, it made me really happy that indy and marion ended up getting married at the end of the moovie, and there was the one scene where they are arguing, like they always do, and she says something like "oh, im sure youve had your share of girls since then" and he says "yeah, there were a few, but they all had the same problem. None of them were you" and she smiles at him, and then he climbs out of the top of the little vehicle they are in to go fight the russians, and i though to myself aww, they still love each other, and it made me happy, and i have to say it made me much happier that they got together in the end than a lot of movies ive seen, ive seen tons of more romantic type movies and things where i really could care less that the two people end up together, but i like that it happend in indiana jones, which i realize makes me a huge dork, but thats ok, and not totally unexpected. i do get a lot of my romantic ideals from kids moovies and things like that, there is a scene in Snoopy The Musical where charlie brown and peppermint patty are talking that i really really like, and actually, i just watched it and there was a part in the song that i had forgotten that is pretty much exactly what im looking for. of course, j is the only one who knows what i am talking about. and then of course, there is the wedding song from The Muppets Take Manhatten that i want to have in my wedding, (i also have to convince my future wife that bobby darin's beyond the sea is a perfect song for our first dance), of course, that all depends on me getting married before brother does cuz he wants to use it as well, which reminds me, before i moved out here j and ash decided that since my "type" is plain midwest girls, and i was moving to kansas, that i was going to be engaged fairly soon, they actually set the over/under at 18 months, and everyone that they told took the under! all of our friends, and ash's mom, and i think both of my parents and everyone. Johny and Ryan Page and Kelsey were the only people who agreed with me and took the over, and i have to say, ive been out here for about 5 months and if anything i am further from getting engaged than i was, although you never know i guess, i might find that girl that actually fills my ridiculously long list of criteria that i have, speaking of which, i was thinking about this the other day, the kind of girl i want would be equally excited if we were going to go on a date to either a baseball game, the symphony, or the zoo. well, maybe not equally excited, cuz i dont know that i would be trully equally excited for all of those, but all of those would be pretty sweet dates i think, and if you were to add iced cream to each of those, oh man, even better
speaking of iced cream, the other day after watching fireworks at riverfest we went to this place in oldtown here , cafe moderne' or something like that, and they had the coolest (no pun intended) ice cream machine ever!! well i guess technically it was a gelato machine but whatever, look how awesome this thing is
its this big huge shiny machine filled with yummy iced cream, and the lady there says would you like to try any and you name a flavor, and the machine spins around so that the lady can give you a sample, and its all very exciting, i read in some article they had posted on the wall that the machine cost $30,000 and they imported it from italy, it was pretty fancy. now, if you know me you know that i can sometimes tend to be a little excitable, and so you can probably imagine the look on my face as i stood in front of this wonderful contraption, im pretty sure i had my mouth hanging open and i had what my friends at purdue called my "pj excited eyes", and apparently the lady there noticed too because she said something to the effect of "you can relax, its just ice cream"

heres a couple other real quick things

im running low on shampoo so i was going to get some when i was at the store, although, because im an idiot i got conditioner by mistake cuz i dont pay close enough attention to things, so if you happen to see me and my hair looks strong, silky, and smooth, but not necessarily clean, thats why...

speaking of the store, while i was there i also got some toilet paper, i only mention this because this is the first time ive had to buy any since i first moved out here, and that was like 5 months ago, which i think is a bit crazy, and its not like i had gone to sams club or something and gotten 100 rolls, i just got a 6 pack. granted, they were "mega rolls" or something like that, and they supposedly have more paper than normal rolls, but it still seems like a ridiculously long amount of time to last...

i was at church this past sunday, and they had a baptism, and like most baptisms they give a candle to the person being baptized, or in cases of babies like this one to their parents, and so the mom of the kid was holding the candle, and she was also holding what i assume was her other son, probably around 3 or so, and after they were done with everything she told the kid he could blow it out, and he tried and tried, but he couldnt do it, he kept blowing on the candle but he couldnt blow it out, and after a while his mom got frustrated and just blew it out for him, and this cracked me up, because i started thinking of the time at state when our hockey team was helping at the Halloween carnival, and we had set up a booth where we had jack-o-lanterns with candles in them, and we gave the kids squirt guns and they had to try and shoot the candles out, and it wasnt really hard, we didnt make them stand behind a line or anything, they could stand as close as they wanted, and some of them practically put their hand in the pumpkin to shoot out the candle, which is fine, but for some reason some idiot kids could not shoot out the candle for the life of them, and whenever this happened eventually one of us would get tired of waiting for the kid and would just blow the candle out. we were dressed as all the characters from the ninja turtles so whenever someone had to blow a candle out for a kid they would yell "shell shocked!" and we would all laugh cuz we knew that meant some stupid kid couldnt figure out how to work their squirt gun, and then we would give them one of the andes mints that kent had brought, cuz for some reason he thought those would make good halloween candy... so i was remembering all of this while watching the kid in church, and i was cracking up, but it was the middle of church service so i was trying real hard not to laugh, and i ended up doing one of those stupid half try not to laugh things that only makes things worse, i dont know if anyone noticed or not...

and finally, this is my new favorite restaurant
I should say its my new favorite restaurant that i most likely will never actually eat in, my good friend kelsey sent me this picture from her trip in south dakota

My Texciting Adventure

hello friends,
so this past weekend i went down to college station to visit my friend ashley, at one point while i was driving i passed this truck that belonged to the texas cement company (or something like that) and on the back it had a website texcement.com which inspired me to invent a new word, texcitment, which means when you are either super excited about something( texas sized excitement) , or just excited about something texas related, in general i enjoy teasing texans, they are very proud of their state, which i guess i can relate to but i think they tend to take things a bit overboard, like "texas sizing" your order at fast food joints and things like that, which really, that should only be the second largest size you can get, since alaska is the biggest state, i like to go to restaurants in texas and try to alaska size my order, which they dont appreciate much, and one time aaron and i were driving to el paso and there was a billboard for some beer and the caption said "texas cold" which doesnt even make any sense cuz its generally pretty warm down there, but you know the texans read that and say "hell yeah texas cold beer!", i will give them one thing, as you drive through texas you might see signs on the side of the road that say "drive friendly, the texas way" or something like that, and one thing that i have consistently seen in texas that i have never seen in any other state is if you are driving down a 2 lane road, and you are behind a slow driver they will pull over and drive on the shoulder so its easier to pass them, which is really nice, so i shouldnt make fun of them too much, but i did think my new word was funny so i kept saying it all weekend "oh man! i am texcited about this baseball game" and things like that, ashley told it to one of her friends who was from there and he liked it, so perhaps my new word will catch on ...
anyways, so while i was down there we went to a couple of texas A&M baseball games, and hung out with some of her friends and whatnot, but that is not what i am going to focus on now, saturday we went to this lake and fished most of the day, which was a lot of fun because i am awesome at fishing, and ash doesnt really know anything about it so i was going to teach her a thing or two. now ashley loves taking pictures so we took her camera and took a bunch during the day, and i thought it would be a fun thing if i showed you all the pictures and added little captions and short descriptions and didnt just ramble on forever, they say pictures are worth a thousand words, and i assume that is for a normal person so in my case its probably closer to two thousand, which means these 35 pictures will be saving you from having two read 70,000 words and having to set aside 3 hours to get through this whole thing....
Hey do you remember when i said i am awesome at fishing at ash is not? (you better, that was only about 8 lines ago) well, that was a blatant lie, i am terrible at fishing, and ash fishes all the time and is really good, just to give you an idea of how much of a mismatch this competition is let me show you a few pictures from the last time we went fishing, we were ocean fishing out in california, here is ashley with her fish, it was so big she had to use the special hook on a stick thing to pull it in
My favorite part of that picture is the face my cousin broc is making. so that is one of the many fish that ashley caught, it took me a long time before i caught anything, and i finally caught a fish and we were going to take a picture of me holding it but before we could snap the picture it let go of the hook and fell on the deck of the boat, i hadnt even hooked my tiny fish, it was just hanging on to make me feel better about myself...
so as you can see i had my work cut out for me, but i was full of unjustified confidence and i was pretty sure i was going to win, here is ashley setting up our poles for the day, i didnt really know what she was doing but i tried to keep an eye on her to make sure she didnt rig my pole funny or something and fix the competition in her favor
here is a nice picture of the lake we were at, or it would be a nice picture if you ignore the large industrial plant on the far side of the lake
the sea was angry that day my friends, like an old man sending back soup at a deli
here is me standing on the bank visualizing catching a 55 pound cat fish, that was my plan for the day cuz ash said her dad (or maybe her grandpa) once caught a 53 pound cat fish, ash said she didnt think i was going to do it and my line would probably break anyways, i told her i would just reel it in until it was near land, and then i would jump in the water and punch it in the head and drag it ashore by hand, of course then the water splashed on my foot and it was kind of cold and the idea of jumping in the water seemed less appealing...
ash insisted on taking a picture of me with my coffee from sweet eugenes, she did this because i had recently admitted to liking coffee and she thinks this is a huge deal, i am not real happy about the fact that i like coffee but it is what it is i guess
i am not exactly sure what ash is doing in this picture, i think she might be tasting the bait to see if the fish will like the worms that we had, which reminds me, the worms we had were supposedly fancy worms that had been given something that made them appear real greenish, according to the box they came in this made the fish real excited and ensured more bites and more caught fish, i dont know if i totally believe this, because unless you are a super clutch fisherman like i am and all you have to do is dip your line in the water for a second and pull it out with a fish on it (more on this later) the green stuff really isnt going to help you cuz it washes away almost immediately
(just so you know ash wasnt really eating the bait) Now this is one of my favorite pictures, because i am standing on the bank and i have a bit of a confused look on my face because my line is sticking pretty much straight sideways, in my defense it was super windy that day, it also doesnt help that i suck at fishing, and yes my outfit is completely color coordinated...
did i say i suck at fishing? i meant to say i rock at fishing, it wasnt long before i landed the first fish of the day and i was well on my way to winning the competition, at this point i hadnt decided on the exact rules of the competition, since i was the only one who had caught a fish i was winning in both number of fish and weight of fish caught so things were looking pretty good, the rules could be modified later as needed
ok, ill admit, i may have doctored the last photo just a bit, the picture below is the actual first fish i caught, and its not quite as big, but the fact remained i was still winning
pretty soon ash caught a fish to even the score, although her fish was completely minuscule, she seems proud enough of it though
a little while later ash caught another little embarrassingly small little fish, she actually went on a little hot streak and jumped way ahead but somehow most of those pictures disappeared, i think at this point the score was something like 5-1
the score at this point was pretty much unnacceptable, so then i decided to take it up a notch, i baited my hook with what i would later call my lucky worm, over the next two minutes i landed 4 enormous fishes with the same worm! it was a trully remarkable fishing performance

look at that monster!

i didnt know there were whales in this lake!
ok, so that last one was a bit small, actually im pretty sure i used to have bigger fish in my desktop aquarium back in school, but look at this next one! its almost as big as i am!
unfortunately, that last beast of a fish ate the last bit of my lucky worm, and i would go through a bit of a rough patch, actually it was about this point that i wandered off to go to the bathroom and thought it would be a good idea to go ant fishing with my toes, i was wandering through some grass and low plants and stuff and thought to myself "hmm, there is something prickly underfoot" and i looked down and fire ants were swarming all over my left foot, so i had to stop and pick them all off, fortunately most of them were just on my sandal and there were only a few of them that were actually biting my toes and foot, it was still pretty lame tho, what was also lame was that ash just kept catching fish and i didnt catch anything else for a while

pathetic...
tiny...
i dont know why but for some reason ash said i couldnt count the next fish i caught

lame...

look out! if that fish was any bigger he could swallow me whole, i imagine it was a fish like this that ate jonah

at this point you might begin to notice a trend, that for every monster fish i catch, ashley catches two little minnows
i think if you were to combine all of ashleys fish you might have enough meat to make about a half of a fish stick

here is a picture of me desperately trying to pick up a tiny ashley sized fish, normally i wouldnt care because it was way smaller than all the fish i was catching, but i was getting way behind in the score, and earlier ash had dropped one and i said if it jumps back in the water she couldnt count it, and so i had to hurry and make sure she couldnt use my made up rule against me

in the meantime ash kept catching tiny fish, they only look bigger than mine because she has smaller hands than i do (and they are actually bigger)
at this point ash was up 10-7, and it was starting to get a little bit later in the day, so we decided to set a time limit and only fish for another 45 minutes, because we are both super competitive and otherwise we would have stayed out there all day, with about 15 minutes left i was still trailing by a lot, and i hadnt caught anything for a while, so i decided i needed to switch locations hoping my luck would change, it didnt really help

while i was in my new location not catching fish ashley kept running up the score

i realize this fish is really small but if you look hard enough you can find it in the picture there

so at this point ashley was up 12 to 7, and she announced 60 seconds left, and dejected but accepting defeat i walked over to where she was sitting, and i was standing there on the shore, and i had about 2 feet of line dangling from the end of my pole, and i decided to give it one last go, and so i dipped my line in the water, and i said "heeeeeeeere fishy fishy fishy fish!" (and if you know what that is from you are awesome) and i pulled my pole out of the water again and there was a fish on the end of it!!!! it was the most clutch fishing of all time!! and i was really happy, here is the picture of me with my buzzer beater
i was pretty happy, i mean i didnt win, but i at least caught some fish, and my buzzer beater fish was pretty clutch and exciting, so i was feeling pretty good about the whole thing, and then ash reeled in her line...
what a jerk!!! she couldnt even allow me my tiny moment of glory, she had to top my last second fish with an even more last second fish, there couldnt have been more than 5 seconds left on the clock, cuz i dipped my pole in the water when she said 60 seconds left, pulled it out a few seconds after that, and we had time to get the camera, take a picture, take the fish off the hook and throw it back, and then she reeled in her line and there was her last fish, securing her 5 fish win, 13-8, no class... needless to say i was pretty dejected

ash was pretty excited
oh man, i was legitimately upset by this, i mean i knew the odds of me winning were slim, but then i was holding my own for a while, and then ash pulled away which was fine cuz she is a lot better at fishing than me, and then i got my miracle last second fish, and then ash completely stomped on what little excitement i had left, this is me, completely emotionally drained...

and what did i win as a consolation prize? how about terrible sunburns on the top of my feet! we had sunscreen but we had forgotten to put it on, and by forgot i mean did it on purpose to spite petey
actually, this picture doesnt even really capture the magnitude of how bad i burned my feet, it does a good job of showing the sick sandal lines, but this was too short after it happened and they werent as deep red as they would get, plus, this was before the ant bites really swelled up and i got yucky blisters in those spots too....yeah, my feet were not real happy with me