Barb’s Burblings

There was this Italian restaurant in Connecticut that we went to a LOT when I was growing up. In the back room, they had an arcade. In between ordering and the food arriving, I would scamper back and play Super Mario Bros. We didn’t have a Nintendo, so except for when I was visiting friends (”What do you want to do, Barb?” “Play Nintendo!” “But we did that last time.” “…Please?”), this was my chance to play.

I recently downloaded Super Mario Bros. and Super Mario Bros. 3 on my Wii. This is the Best. Thing. Ever. This illustrates why it was probably a good thing that we didn’t have a Nintendo. Because ALL I DO is play videogames when I’m home. If I’m not playing one of those (or Sonic), I’m playing Wobbly Bobbly on my computer. (I finally beat it! YEAH!) This is probably not the healthiest situation. Particularly since I’m all, “Ooh, I should compare it to Super Mario Bros. Wii” (which, good idea–it’s so impressive seeing how they updated it) (though I do get annoyed by the new one defaulting more to Mario shooting ice; I like the fireballs).

So obviously I have more pressing things to do than to update this blog.

There’s an awesome 60 Minutes clip–12 minutes of footage of a cable car ride in San Francisco, taken mere days before the 1906 earthquake. At first I watched it, just appreciating the clothes (the hats!), the old cars weaving around, the horse-and-carts sharing the road with the cable cars and the cars. Such an interesting period, the turn of last century. I particularly enjoyed the bicycles passing the cable car.

But as I watched, I got more involved with the fact that the earthquake was going to happen. It particularly hit me late in the clip, as people started darting into the picture more, hamming it up a bit for the camera. And I couldn’t help but contrast that with the images of the post-earthquake city. And so sad. So, so sad.

Because I’m a glutton for punishment (and also a glutton for burritos), I went to the grand opening of the Chipotle by my apartment. It was a MADHOUSE. The cooks weren’t quite as efficient as the ones in Silver Spring, but the line moved fairly quickly. Still, I probably was in line for a good 15-20 minutes. (Why??? I had perfectly good Chinese leftovers at home.) Anyway, after a while, I realized that the people there fell into two basic groups: kids and their parents. Seriously, if they had kicked out everyone under 20, my wait would’ve been extremely short. (Assuming the parents left with their kids, which, judging from their faces, they probably would’ve.)

This got me to thinking. If I had had a kid shortly out of college, I could have a 9-year-old at this point. Plenty of people my age, though many have only had them in the past 2-3 years. And this seemed about right in Chipotle–I’d put the parents at mostly older than me by maybe 10 years. (On average.) (Not that I’m good at judging ages.) I don’t think there was another young, single person my age there. It jumped from 16 or so to late-30s. It was definitely an odd feeling. I felt more out of place than I have in a while.

And as I stood in line, the mother behind me ran into another mother she knew and they started chatting. (”It’s so crazy in here! And yet, with all these people, you’re the first person I know. Where did these people come from?” Me (internally): “I’m a hermit.”) And it was then that it hit that though I could be one of those mothers (their kids were maybe 8 or 9)…theirs was a life I remembered more than anything else. And a part of me still relates more to the kid than the mother.

On a positive note, though, I walked there, which obviously totally burned off the burrito. Yay!

I went to three of the Orioles’ first four home games; I also went to three of their last four home games. They were 0-3 at the beginning; they were 2-1 at the end. Which is about right. In all, I went to 16 games, and the team went 7-9, which is astonishing, given their record. The season started off horribly, of course. My boy got injured and was gone until the end of July; the bullpen imploded; nobody performed the way they were expected to. The team went from hopes of .500 to speculation about being historically bad.

And then came Buck Showalter. Players recovered from injury. Pitchers got through the sophomore slump and actually pitched well. Every now and then, hitters managed to get hits with runners in scoring position. The team managed to have a winning August and September, unlike pretty much every other year in the past 10 years. The team had a better record this year than last year. Who’d have thunk it? I think back to those horrible, boring games in the beginning of the year (which were not unlike today’s game, actually), and am so happy for what we have now. Optimism.

I came home and turned on MLB Network and watched the San Francisco Giants beat the San Diego Padres to win the NL West. I saw the crowd at AT&T Park and thought, “That’s going to be us, soon. And I can’t wait.”

For the moment, I’ll be cheering on the Giants and the Yankees. Back in 2006, I visited St. Louis and cheered the Cardinals on to World Series victory. Maybe my presence earlier this year will help out the Giants similarly.

Besides, they have the right team colors

How excited was I to see an article that explains the Nationals’ poor luck? So excited. Because it turns out that the Nats are cursed, and there’s nothing more fun than a baseball curse. And what could be more awesome than a curse related to the Lincoln assassination? Nothing. Nothing is more awesome than that.

Nationals Park sits directly on an infamous stretch of the Anacostia River where authorities conducted the autopsy of John Wilkes Booth on the ironclad U.S.S. Montauk anchored at the Navy Yard. Next door at Fort McNair, Booth’s co-conspirators were held and tried at the country’s first federal penitentiary, and four of them were hanged there in July 1865. Booth himself was buried there until his remains were later moved.

Nestled beside where Lincoln’s killers were executed, the placement of the stadium may have unwittingly exposed the Nationals to the conspirators’ vengeful ghosts. That the apparitions of Booth and his gang would aim their ghoulish enmity on modern baseball may seem strange, but it makes sense given President Lincoln’s affinity for what became our national pastime.

Nothing makes more sense than Lincoln’s assassins haunting a baseball team. I totally think that the Nats should capitalize on this somehow. Nationals Park needs something to give it character. This is the perfect opportunity! I’m thinking exorcism. I’m thinking a plaque, at least. I’m thinking anti-Booth chants. I thinking it will be fantastic.

I wasn’t really aware of the scandal surrounding USC and the Heisman and fines and stuff. I really don’t pay much attention to football if I can help it. I usually can’t remember who won the most recent Super Bowl (the Saints, right?), much less stuff about college football. But the more I heard about Bush returning the award, the more annoyed I got.

And it made me realize how much I appreciate baseball. Sure, baseball’s big with Little League and such, and I’m sure there are colleges where it’s big (probably Georgia Tech, given the number of Major Leaguers to come from there, and probably some schools in California), but really, you don’t hear about most baseball players until they’re in the majors. And I think that’s great. The whole culture of college football and basketball annoys me. I can’t help but feel like college football and basketball players who are playing at that elite level are focusing themselves a LOT more on athletics than academics. And though I’m all about extracurriculars in college (if you saw my schedule during college, you’d know), going to college is about academics.

I’ve read any number of articles about how impressive college athletes are, balancing athletics with their school lives. First of all, it strikes me as insane how much they travel. (How many classes do these people miss???) Second of all, there are TONS of people who balance extracurriculars with academics. I managed to graduate magna cum laude while also being the editor-in-chief of the school newspaper (for which we won an award, people!) (did you read that? “The Pulitzer Prizes of student journalism”. I am made of AWESOME), being active in a service fraternity (including serving on the exec board twice, plus once for my pledge class), studying abroad, participating in student theater, and working two jobs. And you know what? Most of my friends were similarly active. And yet, it’s student athletes who get the focus.

And baseball’s not like that. Sure, when players are drafted, a lot of them get a lot of money. And I’m sure that agents woo players and such. But the whole thing just feels less…corporate than other college sports. Which I think is a good thing.

Spam emails have new meaning for me. I was going through my work spam email when I noticed that a number offered Percocet for me without prescription. Ew, I thought. No way. Because now I have had firsthand experience with Percocet, thanks to my kidney stone.

Yes, I had a kidney stone. Yes, I am only 31 years old. My body has decided that I am, in effect, 50. (It actually decided that a while back, which led to me having a colonoscopy. Nothing like having one of those when you’re in your 20s!) Last Sunday night, I felt an odd pain in my lower left side. It went away after a while, and, being an optimist, I figured it would never come back. Yay!

Only that was not to be. About 45 minutes later, the pain came back. And it hurt worse. So I called the number on my insurance card and talked to a nurse, who told me to call my doctor, but since there weren’t any other symptoms, not to worry. Just take Advil. So I did. Which…didn’t help the pain so much. And then came the vomiting! When I called back with that update, I was told to head to the ER.

Now, I have to say, the time to hit the ER is apparently around midnight Sunday night of a holiday weekend. It was very quiet. I was seen immediately (making me two-for-two in ER visits this way; I only had to wait minimally the last time, when I had to get stitches on my thumb) and got to experience a CAT scan. Whee? Luckily, the pain had subsided again by that point, because that was slightly awkward. So I spent a fun 2.5 hours in the hospital, mostly reading (when I wasn’t curled into a little ball of pain). (Also, now I associate Roald Dahl with this, because I finished Going Solo and started The Irregulars, about his time in DC during World War II. So, that’s kind of weird.) The doctor was fab and everyone was lovely and I was home by 3 a.m.

And then I spent the next 3 days in a haze of pain, nausea, and sleep. A fab coworker came over and filled my prescriptions for me (and experienced the joy of me yarfing). Apparently, a side effect of Percocet is nausea. Now, I don’t know if it was the pain or the Percocet, but I could just not keep anything down there for a while. Which led to the incredibly TMI anti-nausea suppositories. I don’t want to think about it. But it’s at the point that I can only now start to think of juice without wanting to vomit.

But I slept a LOT and on Wednesday night passed the stone, which, according to my nurse coworkers I showed it to, is HUGE. The urologist I saw today was also somewhat impressed. (Want to see a blurry picture of it?) And now I have something like a 50% chance of getting another one. So, you know, something to look forward to.

Hopefully by that time, they’ll have something other than Percocet for the pain.

Around 1 on Wednesday afternoon, we got an email that there was a “disturbance” outside the building, and that we should stay inside. Naturally, I was intrigued, but it wasn’t until I heard coworkers talking about police cars swarming Georgia Avenue that I got up and headed to the windows on that side of the building.

So there, along with a bunch of coworkers, I watched as the police blocked off initially just the roads right around the Discovery Building…and then the next blocks. We watched as cops did the whole darting from place to place thing, guns held up. (I may have described this as “bad ass.” Because it totally was.) I took all this in and said that there must be someone in the Discovery Building with explosives, probably with hostages. (We were trying to figure out whether the building had been evacuated; we didn’t think so, but it turned out that they had evacuated to the other side of the building.)

And wow. I was right. It’s kind of hard t focus on work when you know that there could be an explosion across the street. But honestly, I never felt like I was in danger. Though it was a bit unnerving when I took the bridge from my building to the parking garage next door; despite the fact that the building I work in lay between us and the Discovery Building, the alley was blocked off, with cops and cop cars throughout. I paused to take this in (and maybe take a picture with my phone) when a voice came from below: “Ma’am! What are you doing? KEEP MOVING!” So I did.

Best part of the story? Because of the craziness, the parking garage wasn’t charging. Yay!

My thoughts about Stephen Strasburg are fairly obvious, so you can imagine my reaction to him going on the DL for the second time in the 2 months he’s been in the major leagues. Honestly, my problem isn’t with him. It’s just that I fear that people have him built up. Just because he’s really, really good doesn’t guarantee him a spot in the Hall of Fame or in the next 10 All-Star Games.

Or, you could just read what Joe Posnanski wrote:

There is an endless list of names … players who could have been in Cooperstown with the great stuff they had … Roger Salkeld … Dean Burke … Les Rohr … Brien Taylor … David Clyde … Bill Pulsipher … Todd Van Poppel … these are not cautionary tales. These are not exceptions to the rule. They are the rule. These are the reality pitchers, the ones who had their great careers ended before they began.

All of which is to say that Stephen Strasburg fights the odds. But he was fighting the odds anyway, long before this latest injury. Pitchers get hurt in a thousand different ways. And it isn’t the ability to endure pain that gets them through even if a lughead like Rob Dibble thinks Strasburg should just “suck it up” and “stop crying.” No, it’s preparation, and it’s luck, and it’s taking care of yourself, and it’s luck, and it’s maintaining form, and it’s luck, and in many cases it’s surgery.

So I wish Strasburg luck. And if his career is one of flashes of brilliance and extended stints on the DL, I’ll be saddened. But not surprised.

If you want to visit a site that you make you laugh until you cry, check out Hyperbole and a Half. Seriously, it brings me nothing but joy. And insight into my life. Seriously, this spiral (from “This Is Why I’ll Never Be an Adult“) happens to me on an all-too-regular basis at work:

The longer I procrastinate on returning phone calls and emails, the more guilty I feel about it. The guilt I feel causes me to avoid the issue further, which only leads to more guilt and more procrastination. It gets to the point where I don’t email someone for fear of reminding them that they emailed me and thus giving them a reason to be disappointed in me.

Then the guilt from my ignored responsibilities grows so large that merely carrying it around with me feels like a huge responsibility. It takes up a sizable portion of my capacity, leaving me almost completely useless for anything other than consuming nachos and surfing the internet like an attention-deficient squirrel on PCP.

Do yourself a favor and check out the archives. Made of awesome, and perfect for a Sunday night.