Why Squirrel Hate Me?

A Visit to Citi Field & Let's Go (Mostly Former) Mets

Larry and I braved the unbelievable cold last night to venture out and watch the Mets play their first game in Citi Field. Driving up to the stadium reminded me of the first time I went to Camden Yards. Up until then my only view inside of baseball stadiums had been the Oakland Coliseum and Shea, both scrappy tin cans that reflected the maverick spirit of the teams that played there.

But even in the bitter cold, Citi Field was warm and inviting. Whether sincere or not, every employee from the person who sold us a parking pass through to the random "Guest Relations" folks who came up and offered unsolicited (but welcome) help during the game wore a smile and offered a friendly greeting. I noticed the Guest Relations name tags listed the bearer's home town, reminding me of Cruise Directors, an apt comparison I think.

Our seats were at the back of the field level behind the visitor's dugout. Fans were standing behind us on the walkway for the entire game. Back at Shea, these folks would have been rushed along, told to get to their seats. Whether it's the new venue or the new attitude of the staff, people were encouraged to wander the stadium as if it were an amusement park... sample food, sit at picnic tables, linger in the stores, re-visit history in the beautiful rotunda, visit the bars, play games and oh by the way, watch a baseball game if they were so inclined.

As mentioned, it was unbelievably cold and right around the seventh inning stretch I had that itch to hit the road and beat traffic (heck it was only an exhibition game!) and then it hit us... oh my golly there's something to look forward to in the eighth and ninth innings! So we stayed put and weren't disappointed.

The educated fans gave new set-up man (the unfortunately named) J.J. Putz and much needed, very welcome, new closer Francisco Rodriguez (who I've been told likes to be called Frankie, not K-Rod) rousing cheers and were rewarded with a preview of the guys who will surely save the Mets from a September collapse this year.

Seeing those two close out the game renewed our energy and led to a lively discussion on the drive home. The exercise? Field the best World Series team of Mets from all history. This alternate universe scenario asked Larry to pick Mets players at each position who essentially had the best single year all around stats (yes defense was taken into consideration), no extra consideration was given for career longevity or multi-year consistency. Some consideration was given to "clutch" (or high pressure situation) performance. Let's see if you agree with the choices.

C - Mike Piazza (not so close second when you look at the stats: Gary Carter)
1B - Update: Gordon reminded us about my favorite Mets first baseman, John Olerud, and his great year in '98. So he replaces original choice: Keith Hernandez
2B - Edgardo Alfonzo
3B - David Wright (close second: Howard Johnson)
SS - Jose Reyes
RF - Darryl Strawberry
CF - Carlos Beltran
LF - Cleon Jones
SP - Doc Gooden (shocked it's not Seaver? take a peek at Doc's '85 season. He was 20 years old.)
RP - Jesse Orosco
Closer - Billy Wagner (close second: Armando Benitez although we couldn't fathom putting him out there in any important game)
Manager - Gil Hodges

Three of those guys still play for the Mets and if we did this again at the end of the year, would Frankie be replacing Wagner? We'll see. I think it'll be a good year.

When we got home we had a chuckle over discussing players who were Hall of Fame caliber but didn't do their best work for the Mets (end of career, injuries, etc).

C - Yogi Berra
1B - Eddie Murray
2B - Roberto Alomar
3B - Ken Boyer
SS - Larry Bowa
OF - Willie Mays, Rickey Henderson, Duke Snider
SP - Warren Spahn (363 career victories, 4 of them for the Mets over 20 starts in '65, ouch!)

Will the signing of Gary Sheffield yesterday continue the Mets sad tradition of being the team where good/great/amazing players come to die? I guess we'll reserve judgment on that one.


Pirate, Mr. Met and Kevin Burkhart welcome you to Citi Field.

Larry's set of photos from the evening.

Sunday is Scattered Thoughts Day

I'm really without words lately, but maybe you can get a peek into my brain by what I'm reading.

Tabs open in Firefox right now or recently:

Alice Waters (and the Edible Schoolyard)
NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament
NABC in Houston
Clay Shirky
Roto Baseball Pre-Season Player Rankings
Aion
Michael Ian Black
Discovery Lifts Off
SXSW
Elizabeth Gilbert on genius (TED)

And I'm not looking at these RIGHT now but I'll take any opportunity to plug:
Tony Hightower's - DSO Trivia
Anne's Etsy Store - Felt It

See? I told you I'm boring.

Bleh.

I haven't had anything to say in months and today is no different. Sorry.

'Air and Simple Gifts' John Williams at Obama Inauguration

Bare Walls

Now that I have all these freshly painted walls, I've been noodling over what to put on them. Larry and I went through our accumulated pieces and we have several cool things; animation cells, the cast of characters from Springfield, an original Charles Schulz drawing of Snoopy as well as Schulz's Stan Musial and Charlie Brown. Appropriate for the basement game room but if we put them up in the living room, people might think we've never grown up. (While this may be true, why advertise?) I've been looking on etsy.com for handcrafted pieces, but coming up a bit short when it comes to assembling a set of pieces that may go well together.

My thoughts turned to photography. I have some beautiful photos taken by a former co-worker, Claudine. As stand alone pieces they're great, but there's no unifying theme. Pondering on it a bit more, I was inspired by the many photographs I cherish from the trips my friend, Peter, and I took to to Walden Pond. So I began toying with the idea of assembling groups of photos from places Larry and I have lived or spent significant time. I started poking around on etsy and assembled a small gallery of photos to either acquire or inspire. I'll start working my way to photographer sites soon.

I need inspiration or direction though so if you have ideas or photographers to point me to, I'd appreciate it. I know several folks who may read this are talented photographers (Smrz, Messley, Caro, Havekost - I'm talking to you!) so your input would be especially appreciated. The locales I'm particularly interested in are - San Francisco Bay Area (SF, Berkeley, East Bay), Manhattan, Queens, upstate NY (Troy, Albany), DC Beltway (College Park MD, Fairfax, DC), Baltimore, Northern NJ (Nutley, Montclair, the Oranges) and Cambridge MA.

Etsy Gallery:

Etsy Buy Handmade dascher

Happy Holidays from Wunderman & Gems of Contradiction

diana has produced a brilliant new TV spot using innovative new robotic technology. It's truly a gift to the world, and comes just in time for the holidays. Watch this marvel of high-tech brilliance now, then stick around to create your own personalized commercial that you can send to your friends.

See it now.

See the creation process.

Random Weekend Notes

Completely random self-indulgent stuff that doesn't really fit anywhere else:

Now that I have a proper home office (one that isn't shared with the main TV in the house) I was able to add speakers to my computer again and have been rocking out to holiday music and NPR all weekend when I've been hanging out online. Things I've learned? The Charlie Brown Christmas Album and George Winston NEVER get old.... Christmas with the Chipmunks does.

Another Saturday spent baking cookies. This weekend's batch turned out much better though and we will definitely be able to take them to work and distribute to the masses. This is good news as we don't actually like to EAT cookies, but rather we enjoy the process of making them. Now this way they won't go to waste.


You can see last week's gingerbread creation in the back. And peeking out at the top is the cool fish plate Craig gave me years ago. It usually finds a place of honor on the table but has been displaced to the window sill with the radio to make way for cookie land.

And below, you can also see tucked in there are the jars of yummy sugar cookies Anne gave us this week (blue and red lids).

In the middle of writing this entry, I found a use for the mutant cookies from last week... squirrel bait. I threw some pieces out onto the deck amongst the tree bits that fall from the neighbors' trees. All the better to lure squirrels to taunt Robin.
I very much wanted to go to the Bust Holiday Craftacular today but health issues have me sidelined. We still have next to no decorative items for the house and I wanted to try and find handmade items for my nieces and friend's kids for holidays... and I just eat up the folksy, crafty stuff so I'm more bummed than seems possible by not being able to summon the energy to go. But I can't tucker myself out on the weekend and then be rendered useless during the week for work.

Speaking of decorating... the house isn't coming together as quickly as I would like but it's livable certainly. Random bits...

Kitchen side table with the new menorah:

Rustic bench from Mom that goes great with kitchen table that we may be able to use for actually eating sometime after cookie season:

And to continue with the complete randomness... I really enjoyed SNL last night. It's the first time in a long time I remember laughing consistently throughout the show. Amy Poehler really went out on a high note.

To wrap up... fun with glitter pens...

Really? Who Knew?

You are a Social Liberal (76% permissive) and an... Economic Liberal (18% permissive) You are best described as a: Socialist Link: The Politics Test on Ok Cupid Also : The OkCupid Dating Persona Test

House Update IV - The Menace from Below

So this should be the last update before we write all the big checks. A mere three months after we started looking and two months after we picked the house we are finally cleared to close. Tuesday we will be meeting several people we've only ever dealt with by phone or email and giving them a bunch of money in exchange for some keys.

The biggest concern over the last month has been an abandoned oil tank under the driveway. This is apparently not uncommon in New Jersey and it was one of those things the realtor mentioned in an offhand way as we were grinning from ear to ear after the first showing... "yeah it looks great... I guess the only thing we have to be worried about is an oil tank". And as it turns out, besides a mortgage broker who kept making life difficult for the attorney and realtor, finding the oil tank turned out to be our only major problem.


Its possible existence was discovered during the initial inspection and that set off a chain of events that seemed to drag on for no good reason. First we had to let the seller know, then we had to pay for an "oil tank sweep" where they come in with sonar and see if there's really something down there, then it's time for the permit parade. In theory the seller's attorney or realtor was supposed to take care of all the permits but they didn't seem to have any interest and eventually our realtor had to do the driving around to pick up all the permits. Finally on Friday, during the light rain, they came to dig a big hole in our (soon to be) driveway and endear us to the new neighbors by storing the dirt on their driveway during the process. Howdy neighbors!

When they pulled it out, it was full of water. I find this incredibly interesting but Larry didn't ask why there would be water in the tank, he was just happy it was "full" as that gave everyone strong reason to believe there was no leak. Still, there's a process to all of this and soil samples still needed to be sent to a lab so all the agencies that care can be assured there is no oil seeping into the innards of Englewood.


Because it was full of water and not oil and also because we have issues with our loan if we don't close on Tuesday we managed to convince everyone involved that Tuesday is the day and now the wheels are finally in motion. I'm taking it on blind faith that the contractors will be able to work inside the house next week and the paint will be freshly dried on the walls as the new furniture is delivered next week and we move in next weekend. But we'll see how that goes.

Hopefully the new neighbors don't hate us already.