Ch-ch-ch-changes

Love me some Bowie. Anyways, while perusing through a bunch of blogs (some interesting, some disturbing, many in foreign languages) I observed that there were many new templates to choose from, and this one I happened to like the best. So I zoomed on over to my blog and did a little update. Of course, the right sidebar is all messed up, but being as lacking in HTML skills as I am, I am of little mind to go to any effort to try and fix it. Which may mean that I'll have to switch over to some other template that actually looks right...but for now this'll do. :) Do you really need the links to my archives?? ;)

Dartmouth Softball Dominance (rowr!)

So, the weekend after my last update was the playoffs for the Boston Area Ivy League Softball League. Woo! It was quite an incredible weekend. Well, I feel like our team's story would be best told through the thrilling summary our team captain, Len, wrote up post games:

Our excellent adventure started out vs. the 1927 Yankees, er, the Cornell squad that appeared out of the Brookline Hills T-stop phone booth. Not the same guys we played just three weeks ago and easily pummeled with our 21-batter hit parade. Ok, back up, the story really starts last week, as the team doctor gives clearance for Wakefield (aka Janet) to return to the field.

Now back to the Cornell team, aka the Return of the Babe. This team had a guy who had four pitches thrown to him and he hit three home runs. Fortunately for us, they batted him seventh, nobody got on base ahead of him and he led off two innings. So, this machine, er, man, was 3 HR, 4 RBI, 0 problems. What we could control in the field was the continuation of a stellar season in the field where we never gave up more than 12 runs in a game. Barry and Chris continued to vacuum clean the left side of the infield, Matt as goalie, er first basemen, did not allow a shot, er, errant throw to get by him all weekend. Michelle made all the plays at second. Jon, Andrew, Enrique, and the smiling Steves sealed up the outfield, and Jane and Janet snared all the laser shots up the middle.

We continued a trend started in the last game of the season vs. Princeton where we wait until the other team gets comfortably ahead of us, then we score a lot of runs in the sixth inning and then go out and retrieve the three blips that are the byproduct of their shock to finish out the final frame. In the Cornell game, we were down 9-5 heading into the bottom of the sixth. Quoth Chris Cho, "I hate this field, cuz I actually have to run for the homers." Chris leads off our half of the sixth. Quoth the Cornell third base coach during the top of the seventh, "I've never seen someone hit a softball that far and I've played a lot of softball against a lot of really good players." This one squibbed thru the infield...of the other field. Now we're down 9-6. Andrew singled, then Jon followed with a monster clutch triple. Barry singled him in and now we're back to 9-8 with our killer bottom of the order coming up. Steve Sr.,! Matt, and Jane each come up with clutch singles, so the sacks are loaded. Your beloved spammer, the guy who bats last, comes up and he's been playing the shell game with the Cornell third basemen all night. Wrong again, I was going left. After a Teletubbie tumble by the third baseman, the big D has two more runs and the lead 10-9. Steve Jr. hits a three-run homer, just because he wants to, to finish out the inning and now we got a nice 13-9 cushion. This proves to be the game-winner. The Terminator leads off the next inning with his usual HR and the rest is history. 13-11 Dartmouth. Onward to our favorite arc-pitching nemesis, Princeton.

All the Princeton alumni showed up for this game and they were all in the order. Almost identical to the last Princeton game, they jumped out to a quick lead, going up 9-6. Last time against them, we scored 4 in the fifth and 6 in the sixth. This time, we go for 4 in the fifth and 7 in the sixth. Now we're up 17-11 and Princeton really really wanted to win this one, even though they never keep score. Not this year, because we have Janet, we can rebuild her, we can make her stronger, we can make her go where no woman has gone before. Rewind to Stanford game, our beloved Adam hits a laser shot down the middle and unfortunately, Janet breaks a finger in the glove hand. Yeah, this is Dartmouth, we break stuff. But we come back, whether real or artificial. First batter in the seventh for Princeton gets on. Once again, laser shot bat thru the box. Janet, with the quickness of a hummingbird, snares the shot back thru the middle, just like the bullet scene in the first Matrix movie. She is the One. Actually, she is position #1 and the runner at first (an agent) had been cheating off of first. The look on the face of this poor sucker as Neo, er, Janet tosses the ball to Matt for the emotion-sapping double play. And this game was all about Jon, Chris, and Enrique. They combined to go 11-12, scoring ten of our 17 runs. Chris had a couple more home runs and extended our lead for good with a grand slam in the bottom of the sixth. Oh, picture this scene too, Barry running from his car, still in scrubs, stethoscope around his neck, picks up the bat, in stride, and nails the homer in the bottom of the sixth to give us the 12-11 lead. And you thought you had seen it all...

So, amazingly, we duplicate a game from two weeks ago and we're now in the final. Ugh, big bad Harvard awaits. But NO! There is videotape that clearly depicts several Harvard players trying to play for the...for the...last-place Brown team...???...what's going on here. I don't understand this movie. Ah, here's the sense. Brown, a la Cornell, has a penchant for lulling the league into a deep sleep and nails the eight seed annually like it's their Double-Fudge Nut Dobbie Dream. Then they call up every guy who's ever worn the color brown and is in the Hall of Fame and invites him for a generous donation by a booster to come and cut down the self-esteem of the pompous number one seed. It happened to us last year, so we gladly defered the #1 seed to Harvard this year. And as the annual rite goes, these guys who came out off the bushes in the outfield, like clockwork, fade back into the bushes after the Friday night game never to be heard from again until the next year's 8-1 seed game. So, what really happened is Brown was beating Harvard by 2 in the last inning. Somebody on Brown got hurt. Brown declares victory. (I don't believe Harvard conceded so easily.) Then Brown says, now that we won, we can't make it tomorrow. So, Harvard says, let's have a combined team because that way we can bring about greater universal peace and harmony and eventually there will just be one combined team with representatives from all eight teams with the power to create a more perfect union. But Stanford says, no no, we will not allow your union or we will pull a filibuster. Well, needless to say, we arrived and after a few brain massages we were able to understand that we were playing Stanford and not Harvard, Brown, nor the '27 Yankees.

Well, we got off to a good start in the this game, up 4-0 after one inning. I think the debate club event had taken some steam out of Stanford, but they loosened up and came back to take a 6-4 lead in the third. No problem. Chris hits another home run. This was the field where he had to run. But Enrique didn't and took the opportunity to polish up his interpretive dance moves all the way home just ahead of Chris, who had to run if I hadn't mentioned that. This one went a long way, but not as far as the one yesterday. Only to right field on the other field. An Andrew triple and Jon sac fly and we're back in the driver's seat 7-6. We add one more in the fourth for the 8-6 lead before Stanford rallies to take the 9-8 lead. Enrique, Andrew, and Jon make the clutch hits here in the bottom of the fifth to tally two more to take back the lead for good. A bunch of zeros closes out the game. Despite scoring our lowest run total of the year, we are the CHAMPIONS, my friends. The Steven Blank Trophy returns to its rightful owners for the first time since being snatched away some time in the mid-90s. (see this picture) We rode home advantage all the way through and never batted in the bottom of the seventh in any of the games. Another amazing stat is that all twelve of our players had a hit in all three of our games. Barry came the closest to missing the boat on this stat, since he only had one at-bat in the Princeton game, but his game-winning homer kept it intact. Enrique and Chris led the way with eight hits each over the three games, with Michele, Andrew, and Jon with seven each. And the rest of us, Steve Sr and Jr, Matt, Jane, Barry, Janet, and me, had so many hits we would have to use the fuzzy math of Princeton to really know just how many we had.

Our team rules! It was such an amazing season. We went 9-1 including the playoffs. It was a lot of fun to win all those games, especially given our seemingly endless prediliction to get down by about five runs only to come back and win, game after game. As fun as winning is, it really all comes down to the fact that we had a fantastic team of people out there playing every week. All of whom also happen to be great to hang out with as well. Summer would just not be the same without Dartmouth softball.

My most romantic date...to date

On August 8th, Jens took me out to dinner in Boston in the North End. He kept insisting that it was some sort of special day, but I couldn't figure out what he meant. Turned out that August 8th was 100 days after we went on our first date. Aww! So he picked me up, brought me some nice flowers, and then we drove over to go to the restaurant. We went to a place called Cafe Florentine. It was really nice. The North End is so perfect on those late summer evenings, when it's just the right temperature and the sun is setting over the buildings. It's almost magical. sigh We had a lovely dinner, and then we bought some canoli at Mike's Pastry (a North End legend) for dessert. mmm. I got the chocolate dipped one. Amazing, I tell you. Not as amazing as Jens, but, when it comes to pastry, Mike's is hard to beat.

More recent activities

The last week or so hasn't been terribly eventful. More there are just little things that turn into big things. Like how I went to get my oil changed and left with a couple hundred dollars of brake work. Stupid car! But, as everyone keeps reminding me, brakes are rather essential. So I'll take my whining somewhere else. Anyways, had another edition of book club, where we discussed Dolores Claiborne, by Stephen King. It was a pretty good book, and we had some good discussion with it. It was probably more interesting seeing that we're in the Northeast, because the book was set in Maine, and so it was easier to have an insight into the characters and their way of thinking. Next up is Under the Banner of Heaven, by Jon Krakauer, which I have been meaning to read for some time. So that should be good.

Saturday I had the aforementioned car...thing, and then Sunday I did literally nothing. :) I hadn't really planned on not doing anything, but I realized that my to-do list was actually down to nil, so I didn't feel so bad about not doing anything productive. The one thing I did do, which was actually rather exciting, was book the hotel for my and Allison's trip to Montreal over Labor Day. Wheee! I can't wait. I haven't been there in ages, and I'll be rather glad to get out of town for a couple days. We're going to go shopping, see some sights, and go to an Expos game (the most expensive Expos ticket: $40...Canadian. hahaha!!!) Tuesday I got my haircut, and then Wednesday night we had Karilyn's bachelorette party. Woo woo! Well, sorta. We went out for dinner and then did a bit of salsa dancing. I wasn't feeling too up to it, but it was still pretty fun. I told Jens I get to practice on him! The salsa dancing, that is.

Movies

Been on a bit of a movie kick lately. I saw: Garden State, Bourne Supremacy, Anchorman, and Intimate Strangers. Shilpa is great to go to the movies with, too! Next I think we're going to go see Maria Full of Grace. I said I'd go see Intimate Strangers if MFoG was our next movie. :) Anyways, some sort of critical review of above:

Garden State: very cute. Pretty good for a freshman effort. Zach Braff's skills go a long way. Of course I'm a bit biased because Scrubs is practically my favorite show. But it was still a good movie. Small and intimate, with some interesting things to say about being 20something and just living life.

Bourne Supremacy: awesome. It wasn't just a good action movie, it was a good movie period. Naturally movies like this never get anything when it comes to awards, but I would say it might have a shot at the Golden Globes. Movies like this just aren't supposed to be this good! Matt Damon was great. I loved the locations (Jens liked all the Berlin shots), and the cinematography was fantastic. Very indie movie-ish.

Anchorman: love Will Ferrell. the movie was quite funny. just what I needed on a Saturday night! The rumble between all the different news teams was hilarious, and the cameos were great, if only a little distracting. Fun to see a bunch of different comedians get in on the act, though.

Intimate Strangers: was ok. Interesting character study, but was very talky and very French. They go in for symbolism and a lot of signficant glances, and it was somewhat interesting, but I wasn't totally invested in the characters. The ending was also rather anticlimatic. I just didn't feel like it had any effect on me.