Girls who like sports? Unthinkable!

It's been a good past two days, I suppose. Yesterday J and I were originally planning on going to see a baseball game, but we weren't able to get tickets. He found he had a discount for a round of miniature golf (does anyone else call it 'putt-putt'?) and thus a plan was born.

Seven good things:

1. He got me flowers! And he even knows lilies are my favorites, and he got Oriental lilies for me. THey'll last for a while too. They're so pretty and fragrant :)
2. It was raining on our way out there, and he pointed out a rainbow as we drove past the zoo.
3. And we saw another rainbow while we were driving through the next city!
4. Best combination of marketable goods in one location: Gas station/car wash/convenience store/post office/Tim Horton's, all in one. Both WTF and OMG.
5. Putt-putt is actually much more fun when there are unintentional water hazards (aka puddles) on the course.
6. I got a hole in one on the third hole! I have eight weeks of mandatory phys. ed. golf lessons to thank for that.
7. J got a hole in one on the last hole!! You know, the insane one that always takes forever because after that, your ball gets swallowed. Yeah, that one.

Thank goodness we decided to do putt-putt instead of the game, because it would have been rained out. Instead, we went to the game tonight. It was actually more fun than I thought it would be. I'm one of those people who don't really enjoy watching baseball on television, but I think it's much more fun to watch it live. It's a slow sport, so you can afford not to pay attention for a while and still not miss a thing. (Can you tell I'm just not a baseball kind of person?)

Seven more good things:

1. The Columbus Clippers (that's our minor league team) are apparently affiliated with the Cleveland Indians.
2. Any seat in the new Huntington Park is a good seat. We didn't even need the binoculars I brought.
3. I believe there was at least one homer tonight.
   
4. A fly ball went right over our heads. Not like we would have caught it but it was exciting anyways.
5. The food at baseball stadiums always feels so traditional, almost ceremonial. As in, you know you always have to get peanuts at a baseball stadium. And nachos. And soft pretzels. And Dippin' Dots. (If anyone asks me what Dippin' Dots is, I will be severely disappointed.)
6. It was really a lovely night to go. We weren't stuck with any super-annoying kids near us or anything, it was a relaxed game, and the traffic wasn't too bad getting out of it. Besides, now the stadium is in a much nicer neighborhood of Columbus, so the surroundings were nicer.
7. Cheers are much more fun to do once all the adults in your section become inebriated. Having been to an OSU football game where this is, once again, definitely the modus operandi, I strongly recommend that ND start allowing alcohol in the stadium by the time I'll legally be allowed to drink it (ie. my senior year).
   

I think the only bad things were: The freeway we were going to use to get home was closed (big deal, we took a detour) and we lost the game (who cares, we were there for fun).

In other sports news, Tour de France was EPIC today. Check out this footage in English or this footage for better detail, but that is Jens Voight, one of the most loyal teammates (on, I believe, the American team Garmin-Slipstream) in the entire peloton, crashing out in a moment of pure agony. The latest word that I've heard is that he actually lost consciousness for a few moments. Apparently he couldn't move from the spot, because the medical helicopters had to be called in order to get him to the hospital. From the footage, it appears that his head was hurt the worst. It's too bad that you can't see when the cameras cut back to him, because the poor man is just laying on the road, can't hardly move, and knows his dreams of Paris are completely shattered (probably like his knees). I just hope he doesn't have any kind of lasting brain injury -- even though they wear helmets to prevent something like that from happening, bad crashes happen.

Speaking of bad crashes, check out this footage of Frank Schleck of Team SaxoBank getting completely owned by a crash barrier in the 2008 Tour du Suisse. They replayed it during today's stage to explain why he's such a tentative descenter. It's really a miracle that he wasn't harmed except for a few scratches. But this, ladies and gentlemen, is why the same network that hosts PBR (professional bull riding) and extreme cagefighting hosts the Tour de France. They don't call it the Gore de France as a nickname for nothing.

Why does summer only start getting awesome once you realize that you're running out of time?

- Jen -