Sports and Beer

This weekend has been pretty good, really, as it had a lot of a few of my favorite things. It started with the best seats I've ever had at a baseball game on Friday night. 10th row, behind home plate. We were actually able to see how the batters would get fooled on the breaking balls and argue about whether or not pitches caught the corner of the plate. It was marvelous. Plus, they let us get into the diamond club, which has a free buffet. The beer's not free, but, as Larry likes to say, it's kind of hard to bitch about the food with your mouth full. Interestingly, it seems like it's actually more difficult to get beers in the fancy seats. Instead of having the push approach where vendors carry around cartons full of cold beer and sell them to people, these fancy seats go with a pull technique. They have the same types of people walking around with cartons of stuff, but they're rarely full. That's because you have to order what you want, like in a restaurant. Now, maybe the people who will pay $90/ticket for the whole season don't want to drink whatever beer happens to be going by. Maybe they don't drink beer at all. But it seemed like most of the folks who were there on Friday would have been quite happy to. It seems like a less efficient ordering model to me. Plus, the vendor guy has to sit down and write down what you want, possibly distracting you from the grand slam that is being hit at the time. A little hi-tech action would make that a lot better. On-demand beer and hot dogs ... mmmmmmm. But it wasn't really a bad thing. When I run the world, they'll get that distribution model right, though. Props to the BHK for taking me. If he could work out a win for the Nats next time, it would be even better.

Saturday, I got up and headed down to the Charlottesville area for the first home football game of UVA's season. I first went to hang with the fellas at college roomie Tim's house. College roomie Dave and bestest buddy pal Lawton came over, too. Interestingly, it seems like "the fellas" is expanding to include Tim's little boys. Actually, I have more to tell about that, but that will come in another post. Anyway, we had standard guy time, which is to say that we hung out and drank beer and BS'ed and made fun of each other. Good times. Then, Lawton, Dave, and I headed to the stadium for some tailgating. The weather was 10 degrees beyond (or a bunch of clouds short) of perfect, but it was awfully nice for a Virginia Saturday, and it was excellent to get back to the tailgate. We hvae a satellite dish, a generator, a grill, some tables for our food and drink, about 8 coolers, a flagpole, and a whole mess of people. Marvelous. And there is always fried chicken! After a couple of hours of food, beer, sun, and fried chicken, we went in for the game. The Hoos limped in with a victory. It was good to get a win, but they didn't play well, the starting running back hurt his foot in the first quarter, and they kept trying to give the ball away. We'll see how the rest of the season goes. More than anything, it was good to have the Sports Doldrums officially over and to have Lawton doing the color commentary with me again after missing every single game last year.

Sunday, I spent a few hours doing some preliminary work for next weekend's move, then played golf with Tom and Al. I didn't play that great, but my temperamental boomstick was being pretty nice to me. I hit at least 3 drives of 290+ yards, including my first ever legit 300-yarder on number 18. That sent me home feeling pretty good. If I could figure out how to putt, I might be able to improve my scores. But since we're not playing for money, I like to stick with the "drive for show" thing. Sunday night, I went to a cookout at a friend's house and drank many beers.

All in all, it was quite the good weekend. Friends, sports, beer, and some quality outdoor time (sans the standard sunburn). The best part of it is that it's not even over. I still have a whole day left. I hope your weekends were as good.