Apr30

Giants 4, Padres 1

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Yesterday was a beautiful day for a baseball game… and my friend Jo is a Padres fan, so she organized an outing to AT&T Park.  Madison Bumgarner took the mound for the Giants, and unlike the last time I saw Bumgarner pitch, he did an outstanding job, holding the visitors from down south to 1 run on 6 hits over 7.2 innings of work.  The Giants offense gave him all he’d need in the first on a single, pickoff-throwing-error, sac fly combination followed by a Pablo “Panda” Sandoval homerun.

While Jo was less than pleased with the outcome, I was secretly enjoying watching the local boys do good.  After all the Twins games I’ve been watching lately, it was fun to finally cheer for a winner.  (The Twins actually managed to win yesterday, but I was too busy watching the Giants to watch that one.  I did have the radio streaming on my phone before the Giants game started.  Smartphones are magical that way.)

Apr20

Alcatraz: My Evening in Jail

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Alcatraz: My Evening in Jail

A friend is visiting this week from DC, and thus I’ve been able to be a San Francisco tourist again.  Last night, I was finally able to check off the last of the major SF tourism things that I’ve always wanted to do: an Alcatraz night tour.  While it hasn’t been a working prison since 1963, this is the closest I hope to ever get to spending a night in jail.

One of the advantages of the night tour is that they open areas of the prison that aren’t open to the day tour folks, like the hospital upstairs.  There you can see the room where Robert “Bird Man of Alcatraz” Stroud spent 11 months.  (Fun fact: He didn’t have birds at Alcatraz, only at his previous stint at Leavenworth.)  It sounds like if you take on of the day tours, you spend more time exploring the island itself as less of the prison is open.  While checking out all of the birds that roost on Alcatraz Island might be fun (they roost there because there are no predators), if I had been on a day tour, I would have missed the other highlight of the night tour: the demonstration of the prison cell doors.  I took some video, but unless you have a good subwoofer hooked up to your computer, you’re probably not going to get the thunderous vibrations that rumble through every time the doors are opened and closed.  Alcatraz was probably not a good place for prisoners with PTSD.

Of course, everyone knows that Alcatraz was a prison and then became a National Park.  What I was surprised to learn (and quite frankly, disappointed in myself that I didn’t already know) was that from November of 1969 to June of 1971, Alcatraz was occupied by a pan-tribal group of American Indians as a protest against the proposed Termination Act, which would give the US government the power to dissolve reservations and relocate tribal members across the US.  Nixon, dealing with the fallout of Kent State and other protests of the time, decided to let them stay.  For nearly two years, they lived on the island, receiving food and supplies from donors.  Some of their graffiti is still visible, which you can see in one of my pictures below.  After an unknown arsonist burned down a number of the buildings, including the warden’s house, things started to become unstable and the occupation ended soon after.  But the Termination Act was dropped and the occupation is seen as one of the first pan-tribal movements of the 70s which led to a number of improved laws for Native Americans.

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Apr15

Giants 1, Pirates 4

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Giants 1, Pirates 4

In an attempt to balance my Bay Area allegiances, today I went to my first regular season Giants game during their home opening weekend, much like I did with the A’s last week.  It also happened to be Jackie Robinson Day today, when all players wear 42 in honor of the anniversary of Jackie Robinson’s major league debut, breaking the old Gentlemen’s Agreement that kept blacks out of Major League Baseball.   (Of course, I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t mention that Robinson wasn’t actually the first black man to play in the majors.  That honor goes to fellow Michigan alum Moses Fleetwood Walker… although Wikipedia is telling me I might be wrong there.)

Much like last week, the home team lost to a team of seafarers, but this time it was Pirates instead of Mariners.  But the weather was nicer and there’s no denying that it’s just more fun to be at a full stadium with that gorgeous open outfield showing off the sky and the bay than in a mostly empty bowl in Oakland.  On the other hand, no player ever delivers pizza to the AT&T bleachers.

Today I sat (pizza-less) in those bleachers and found myself talking to a couple of fans who were fascinated by my scorebook.  They’d never seen anyone keep score before and they wanted to know how it worked, what the rules were, and why shortstop is 6 and third base is 5 when they don’t play in that order around the infield.  Also, when the Pirates scored their 3rd and 4th runs, they asked if I could just leave that out of the record and make it official… tempting, but no.  Their four year old also seemed interested… for about 10 seconds and then he just wanted a sno cone.  And then he wanted a nap, so he slept on his mom’s lap.  Nothing cuter than a kid with rainbow colored sticky stuff all over his face and hands, wearing a mini Buster Posey jersey, curled up in a ball.

Sitting behind me was a pair of couples on a double date… and I’ve discovered my new pet peeve: guys who try to explain the rules of baseball to their dates and get the rules wrong.  (The runner didn’t take off even though it was a fly ball to the outfielder because of “The Sac Fly Rule” — he took off because there were two outs.  He would have had to tag on a fly ball.)  What’s worse, when the guys left to go get beer, the women suddenly started talking about the game like they’d been watching for years, which I suspect they have.  They probably didn’t need their dates to explain to them that “bases loaded” means “the Giants have a runner on every base.”  And yet, they seemed pretty grateful when that happened.

The game itself was owned by the Pirates pretty early on when Garrett Jones launched a homer to right in the top of the 2nd.  They scored another run later in the inning on a series of singles, and never really looked back.  The Giants tried to squander a Brandon Belt lead-off double in the fifth, but two ground outs later and Belt was crossing home plate as the ump was calling the second out of the inning.  They were more successful squandering Angel Pagan’s lead-off triple in the 8th.  Once that happened, the stadium started to thin out and sure enough, there was no rally in the 9th.

Pictures and such in the slideshow…

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Apr7

Mariners 8, Athletics 7

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Mariners 8, Athletics 7

I volunteered to help run a curling clinic this afternoon, and because I was on that side of the Bay anyway, when it was over I headed over to O.co Coliseum (possibly the most terrible stadium name ever) to catch the second home game of the Oakland A’s season… because in Oakland, the seats are always cheap and plentiful.  (Today: $10 from a scalper for tickets that are $16 face.)

And why are A’s tickets so cheap?  Well, because they tend to trade away players once they start to get expensive (see awesome jersey for Player To Be Named Later I spotted while leaving the game) and because the team’s not that good.  Which they mostly proved by going down 7-0 after the top of the 4th inning.

But then, a funny thing happened… those scrappy little Moneyball players started to crawl their way back.  First with a manufactured sac fly run in the bottom of the 4th and then a solo shot from Jemile Weeks in the bottom of the 5th.  (Weeks is really fun to watch by the way… some big pocketed team will probably snatch him up in a few years, sadly.)  Then they scored two in the 6th off a Kurt Suzuki double that nearly cleared the wall in left and got every one cheering, but they were still down 8-4.  In the 7th Yoenis Cespedes launched a three run bomb to deep center to bring the A’s within one and the crowd — all half-dozen or so that were left — went nuts.  I briefly thought about how amazing it would be if the A’s could actually come back and win…

… but they didn’t.  Of course they didn’t.  The only remaining highlight after the Cespedes homerun was the bunch of balloons that first floated out of the stadium at the end of the 7th and then apparently lost buoyancy as they came back into view in the 9th.  They floated around awhile, nearly landing in center field prompting an usher to run out and jump in the air manically trying to grab them.  Eventually they floated over to the left field seats where another usher retrieved them.  And so ended the balloon drama… and more or less the game.

Apr3

Giants 4, Athletics 2

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Giants 4, Athletics 2

And so it begins…

Okay, not actually the regular season yet, but the pre-season Bay Bridge Exhibition series between the San Francisco Giants and the Oakland Athletics got me out to the ballpark for the first time this year.  I wasn’t sure if I was rooting for the A’s or the Giants, but I wore an A’s jersey that was a free giveaway from last season, and I’m kind of an American League gal, so if forced, I guess I was leaning A’s.  On other hand, I actually live in San Francisco so…

Keeping score at a spring training game in a National League (i.e. no DH) park is quite a challenge.  I utilized my new-ish smart phone more than once to keep track of all the crazy substitutions.  I also used it to tweet in the middle of the game… yeah, I’m kind of ashamed of myself.

The game itself was pretty exciting.  Madison Bumgarner was much more solid than the last time I saw him pitch for the Giants when he gave up 8 straight hits to the Twins to start the game.  However, in the third he gave up a single to Jemile Weeks, followed immediately by a homerun to Eric Sogard to put the A’s up 2-0.  Sogard was an early substitute for Cliff “ought to play cricket” Pennington.  Quick show, Pennington! (That’s for you, you-know-who-you-are.)

It looked for awhile like the underdog A’s might pull it off against the much more beloved Giants, but then Jordan Norberto gave up a solo homerun to Melky Cabrera in the 6th to bring the Giants within one.  A disastrous outing by Fautino DeLosSantos in the seventh led to three Giants runs on one hit: a walk to Ryan Theriot, a hit-by-pitch to Nate Schierholtz, an error by Josh Donaldson at third that allowed Theriot to score, a fielders choice by Angel Pagan that scored Schierholtz, and finally a solid single by Melky Cabrera to score Emmanuel Burriss.

Brian “Fear the Beard” Wilson came out in the 9th with three quick strikeouts to get the save and end the game.  Within about five minutes, seagulls descended out of nowhere onto the stands, eating all the leftover food and beer.  I have no idea where they came from or why they didn’t show up earlier.  I took a bunch of pictures, including one of the seagulls… they’re all below.  Baseball — it’s back!

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Feb28

Happy Birthday, Mom!

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My mother at her birthday lunch on Saturday... I don't really know what's going on this picture either.

There is one reader of this blog who dutifully checks in every morning, whether there’s a new post or not.  Now, this could be because she doesn’t know about RSS or that she could sign-up to get an e-mail every time I post something.  (Really, it’s an option when you leave a comment.)  But it could also be because she’s my mother and she loves me and kind of likes to stalk me.  And because today is her birthday, and I know she’s going to read this first thing in the morning…  Happy Birthday, Mom!  I love you!

Beyond just giving her her own blog post with accompanying bizarre picture courtesy of my sister, I recorded a CD’s worth of songs this weekend that, if my dad did his job right, accompanied her on her way to work today. And because some of them were songs that only a mother could love, I’ll spare the rest of you the whole list and just give you my two favorite tracks.  (Not including the Muppet track I posted three months ago.)

First up is a parody of “When I’m 64” rewritten as “Now You’re 59.”  I fulfilled a lifelong dream of mine and took the original Beatles score and taught myself all the clarinet parts.  The original turns out to be a horrible key for me to sing in, but I didn’t figure that out until after I had recorded the clarinet and piano parts and I wasn’t going to re-record them.

Second, and much more pleasant, is me singing four-part harmony with myself accompanied by my ukulele to cover Crosby, Stills, and Nash’s “Teach Your Children.”  I have half a mind to go spend a bunch of money on a good microphone to make this one sound even better… and fix the rhythm problem in the middle.  For Mom: “Just look at me and sigh… and know I love you.”

Feb17

Ocean fun: Tidepooling

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This past week I have twice taken advantage of the fact that I live very near the Pacific coast.  Saturday I went hiking in Point Reyes on what turned out to be a cloudy morning and today, in much better weather, I helped chaperone a field trip organized by my teacher friend Amber to take her students tidepooling at Half Moon Bay.

For the coastally challenged, “tidepooling” essentially means walking along the coast during low tide and looking at all the lifeforms that are underwater during high tide.  For Amber’s students, they had to take a two foot square of the tide pools and record all the lifeforms they saw, including sea stars, anemones, urchins, mussels, algae, and barnacles.  Because this beach is not a protected area, the students’ data is actually used (along with data collected from lots of field trips) to determine if it should be protected in the future.

I think it’s awesome that the kids get this opportunity.  Growing up in the middle of the country, a field trip to the ocean wasn’t ever on the radar for me.  Before we left, some of the kids were actually complaining about having to go — one even remarked that she thought a trip to the science museum would be more fun.  Science museums are great, but I’d rather see marine biology in its actual native habitat over a science museum aquarium.  At the end of the trip, I caught up with the same student and she agreed that the beach was pretty cool and much more fun than she expected.

As I often do, I toted along the camera and took a bunch of pictures…

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Feb10

Truck Day!

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From what I can gather, today is “truck day” for the Twins (when the equipment heads down to Florida for spring training) and tomorrow is truck day for the Red Sox.  Which means that it’s not too far off from pitchers and catchers reporting, which means it’s not too far from real spring training starting, which means it’s not too far from the baseball season starting!  (I pointed this out to Dave and Amal and they just complained that the traffic around AT&T Park is going to suck again soon.  Some people don’t get it.)

So, because it’s time to start thinking about thinking about baseball, I’ve bought my first set of Giants tickets: April 15 against the Pirates (just to get to the park early in the season), May 14 against the Rockies (so I can wear my Michael Cuddyer jersey), and May 20 against the A’s (for the Brian Wilson gnome giveaway).  I’ve also got tentative plans to fly to Seattle the first weekend in May to see the Twins play the Mariners, plans to see a Twins game in June when I’m in Minneapolis for Martini’s wedding, and will probably go see the Twins when they come to Oakland in August.  (The latter is dependent on whether or not a certain person decides to get married in France that weekend instead.  And I don’t mean me.)  Plus, I’ll probably take in a half dozen or so other A’s games, for which I will not buy tickets in advance because that would be silly.

Hurray for baseball!

Jan16

The Annual Mystery Hunt Post 2012

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Another year, another Mystery Hunt.  Our team, Too Big To Fail, didn’t win this year, but we did finish second, finding the “coin” (a piece of paper) Sunday at about 3 AM.  (But Manic Sages had already been there five hours earlier.)  The theme this year was based around the movie The Producers and after each of the six rounds, we had to write a bad musical which would annoy a specific critic.

For the first five musicals, we were still busy solving puzzles so the musicals were written by an undergrad and I never saw or cared much about them.  But one of the rules was that after you solved the two metas for each musical (which told you what you had to include to make the musical bad), you had to make an appointment a minimum of 45 minutes afterwards to perform the musical… meaning that after the last meta was solved, we had 45 minutes and no other puzzles to solve.  As a result, our last musical, The Ogre of La Mancha, was epic and featured a 40+ person chorus, Dan Katz as Andre the Giant, Amittai Axelrod as Hamish the Big Fat Ass (donkey), Anand Sarwate as the Jolly Green Giant, and yours truly as the Hooge Moogende.  (It’s Dutch, damn it!)  While Amittai and I were nominally the script writers, shots of bourbon and sleep deprivation should probably get a credit here as well.  We were awarded “Best Musical” at the “Tony Awards” (hunt wrap-up) probably for the chorus of singing windmills singing a parody of “I Don Quixote,” masterfully penned by Dan Katz, as our finale.  (I can’t find the lyrics or script right now and I fear it’s not as funny as I thought it was Saturday night.)  Johnston took some widelux photos, and as soon as he develops them, I’ll post them here.

During the final runaround, we had to perform one final bad musical, Jesus Christ Super Star Wars featuring the “hit” song “I Don’t Know How to Love Him Because He’s My Brother.” Despite the fact that we knew this was going to happen, we didn’t actually plan ahead. Luckily the organizing team had provided us with some Star Wars costumes (and I threw my hair into some lame Princess Leia buns). We then us ad libbed our way through something that made no sense (but with brilliant casting of Feldmeier as Jesus). Laura took pictures and I got the big (blurry) musical moment (fed to me mid-show by Dan/Luke Skywalker).

Jesus Christ, Super Star Wars

Mark Feldmeier as Jesus, Dan Katz as Luke Skywalker, Erin Rhode as Princess Leia, Zoz as Darth Maul

I Don't Know How to Love Him Because He's My Brother

Princess Leia sings "I Don't Know How to Love Him Because He's My Brother"

Oh, and there were puzzles, of course. There were a number I liked, but I’m not sure I could come up with a definitive list of favorites, particularly because I still haven’t looked through all the puzzles I missed during the hunt. However, here’s my unordered attempt (outside of the first one).

  • Evil Influence – This is my favorite puzzle: a cryptic/masyu combo puzzle that Jason Juang and I smoked through quickly.  I’m a big fan of well constructed grids and this is one of my favorites.  (See also this year’s Paper Trail below.)
  • Star Search – The first puzzle I sat down with Friday afternoon, that I solved with lalopez, Mike, and a few others with some big help from Jason Juang’s anagram code.  It’s a word search, but as you would expect, there’s a twist.  This puzzle breaks my streak of having the first puzzle I grab be the puzzle that no one can figure out how to solve for the remainder of the hunt.  This one only took us about an hour to crack.
  • Paper Trail – A really beautiful diagramless… again with a twist, which involved using Friday’s Washington Post crossword puzzle in a rather ingenious fashion.  But there is something slightly scary when you get “FRIDAY ????ST” and you think that it might legitimately be cluing Rebecca Black as the artist of Friday.  *shudder*
  • Odd Voided – A straight forward word puzzle that I solved with Anand (and Liz?? I can’t remember who else was there).  It was one of those puzzles where I figured out what to do pretty quickly, which is always satisfying.
  • Keeping Records – To be fair, I only solved half of this one with Roger and then went to sleep.  I woke up and it still wasn’t solved, but sometime thereafter Jamie picked it up and figured out the cipher we were stuck on.  This is definitely a puzzle for people who like to test their cryptography skills.
  • Stage Lines – Senile Gats is probably another possibility for this puzzle’s name because it’s all about reversals.  Galen, Anand, and I had some fun groaning through the odd answers… CROSS ARC/CRASS ORC may have been the strangest.
  • The Signs They Are A-Changin’ – It’s pretty well known on my team that I love cross sums and cross sum variants.  This one was hard… I would gather the best four logic puzzle solvers on our team (Dan, Jackie, Jason, and myself) were working on this and it was slow going, but oh so satisfying when we finally got it.
  • Picture an Acorn – I didn’t see this puzzle during the hunt, but I heard it was pretty funny… and having read through the solution, I agree.

My nomination for this year’s WTF puzzle is The 25th Annual Putnam County Debate Tournament.  Oh, a mnemonic system developed by medieval scholars for logical syllogisms.  I can’t believe we didn’t see that!

Dec23

Merry Christmas

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About a week ago, Big League Stew posted a video a Cincinnati Reds fan had made of his Chris Sabo bobblehead doll rotating on a platform to Mannheim Steamroller. My first thought? That’s pretty lame and I can do way better — the bobblehead isn’t even bobbling its head! Plus, I bet I can do more than one doll at a time.

I mentioned this to Dave, and while he’s not a big baseball fan, throw in the opportunity for some engineering design and he gets into it. After taking some measurements and doing a little white board diagramming, we took a trip to Home Depot to buy equipment to build the bobble platform with a fixed mount for the camera. The hats are actually modified socks from the Target dollar bin, the “snow” is cotton balls, and the song is mine.

It’s way better than the Cincinnati Reds video… it even features a cameo by a wind-up Jim Thome.