Ichiro and Obama

Here is a great picture from the White House photo stream on Flikr.

Griffey's back!

After 9 years away, Ken Griffey Jr. is coming back to Seattle to play baseball. Griffey was just getting started when I began watching baseball, and during those years when the Mariners were so bad, he was the show. Dad and I would go to the Kingdome and sit in the 300 level, in the cheap seats, each with our own walkman so we could listen to Dave Neihaus, and watch Griffey patrol center field and hit homeruns. You had to have Dave, or the game wasn't the same. Mom always thought it was anti-social of us to both have headphones on, but we were sharing the same moment that way. I was sad when Griffey left, but it wasn't as bad as when A-rod left, because he didn't make it seem like a rejection (and it wasn't a money thing, it was a family thing). Benjamin asked me the other day if I would be excited to have Griffey back. Benjamin doesn't feel anything one way or the other about it, since Griffey had just left when he started watching the M's, and he has more loyalty to Mike Cameron, who replaced Griffey. Out of nostalgia, I am glad Griffey is coming back. But will he help the team? I hope so. Anyway, baseball spring training is starting up, another sign of spring!

Get out the rye bread and the mustard...

Get out the rye bread and the mustard, Grandma, it's grand salami time! Dave Niehaus, the voice of the Mariners, is finally headed to the Baseball Hall of Fame. It is about time! One of the reasons I have remained faithful to the Ms all these years of bad baseball, under-performance, long distance listening, is Dave. He is the Mariners. He doesn't chatter too much about things that aren't relative to the game at hand. He doesn't shout too much, or too little. He is as much of a fan of baseball as anyone can be. And he richly deserves to be in the Hall of Fame. Here is the short article announcing the award. Yay Dave!

Update: Here is a link to the Steve Kelley article about Niehaus that says what I was trying to say, only better.

Spring is springing!

Well, not here it isn't, not really. The beautiful, small, pink buds I saw on a tree yesterday are a sign that the end is in sight (even if it is 2 or 3 months away), but it started snowing again yesterday afternoon, and is still at it. However, Mariners pitchers and catchers report to spring training today, and the rest of the team can't be far behind! Three cheers for baseball - even with the acrimony surrounding the semi-controversial Bedard-Jones trade, and with the Rocket on the Hill denying he (or his wife - who cares if she used it, is she in line for the hall of fame?) ever used rocket fuel, baseball is starting again. Spring and summer are just around the corner. Soon these days of cold and snow will be just a memory, and we will be eating fresh produce and listening to J.J. Putz strike out the side in the bottom of the 9th to win the game. Hooray!

And tomorrow is Valentine's Day. I am celebrating by baking an Orange Cardamom bundt cake - any excuse for yummy baking works for me!

Traffic in Toronto

Our adventure this weekend was a trip to Toronto to watch the Mariners play the Blue Jays. We went to Toronto on vacation a few years back, and liked and wanted to return. As soon as we found out that we would be moving to Brockport, we started planning this trip - we try to go see the Mariners whenever they come to town. In Texas, we watched them play in both Arlington (Dallas) and Houston. Up here, Toronto is the closest baseball city... So here is the tale of our Saturday Labo(u)r Day Weekend Adventure.

When I mentioned this trip to a co-worker who used to live in Buffalo, she warned me to plan for a long wait at the border. When I mentioned it to my mother, who always did the driving on family trips to Vancouver, she warned us to plan for a long wait at the border. So, we planned to leave early Saturday morning, and cross at one the northernmost Niagara region crossings. We got to the border region around 9:30 on Saturday morning, and breezed through in about 5 minutes. All the traffic at that crossing was Canadians coming in to the USA, instead of Americans going to Canada. When we came back around 9 PM, all the Canadians were trying to get home, but no-one was going our way, and we zipped through again, after a short exchange with a very polite border guard. Much better than the time Benjamin, Jeff, Luke and I came back from watching a hockey game in Vancouver, and were harassed by a bored guard who almost accused us of being illegals who had stolen my mother's car...

Anyway, we made it through in plenty of time, which made us careless. We had three goals (well, Benjamin had two, I had a third) for this trip: Baseball and IKEA. There is no IKEA in this corner of NY, so we had to go to Canada. Anyway, we had so much time left before we were due in Toronto for the game that we decided to stop at IKEA for a little while on the way. We cruised through, found a chair we liked (more on that later), and decided to come back on the way home, rather than having the chair in the car in Toronto. We also stopped at a grocery store to fulfill my third goal, fennel tea, and get some lunch.

But, as I said, we got careless. I had been so focused on the border that I completely forgot that we were driving towards a big city on a holiday weekend, and the inevitable corresponding heavy traffic. Until Burlington, where the IKEA was, we had been zooming along at 110 km/hr (70 mph). After Burlington, we were only going about 50 mph. The closer we got to Toronto, the worse the traffic got. It took 30 minutes to get from the "Spadina Ave 2 km" sign that marked our exit, to the actual exit. Sigh. By that point it was 1 PM, and the game started at 1:07. Luckily we found the parking garage and a parking spot quickly, but then we had to buy the parking permit...In this garage you did not buy the permit from the attendant on the way in, no, you bought it from a kiosk once you parked the car. Now, this seems like a decent way to do things, except for the fact that no-one could get the things to work. They were supposed to take cash, and we had stopped at an ATM specifically to get cash for parking, but they didn't. They would only allow you to swipe your credit card once for a ticket, which seems reasonable, but several of the people in line in front of us did not have a credit card with them, so other people in line traded cash for a use of their card, which then meant that they could not buy their own tickets...We had to wait behind these people as they tried to figure out what was going on. Then we had to buy our tickets for the game tickets. Sigh. In the end, we missed the first inning, but since nothing happened, we didn't miss too much. All because we got through the border too quickly...If we hadn't, we would have gone straight to Toronto and would probably have been in time.

We had decent seats in the outfield, looking down on Ichiro and Raul Ibanez. Too bad nothing good happened in the game. The Mariners lost their 8th game in a row. The pitching was good on both sides, and the Ms just couldn't score, or hold the tie they eked out in the 8th. This picture shows the most exciting things I saw all game: Ichiro taking off his shoes in the middle of the game (during a pitching change).

After the game, we decided to let the parking garage empty a bit before we tried to leave, and went for a walk down on the waterfront. It turned out that not only was there the baseball game, but there was an air show, and some other kind of fair going on near downtown. There were all kinds of neat boats and ships down on the waterfront. In this picture, the one in the front is a big yacht, and the one in the back is a Greenpeace ship of some sort. They were giving tours, but we didn't stand in line for one. It was a lovely day to be walking around on the water. Every once in a while a set of acrobatic airplanes would zoom overhead...

When we got back to the garage, about 45 minutes after the game got out, it was not empty. Indeed, the cars in line were not moving. It took another 45 minutes to get out of the garage. Then, in yet another traffic-related miscalculation on our part, we decided to try and drive around a bit of Toronto and see the sights. Not a good choice. Spadina, the street we were on, was bumper to bumper and not moving - every light only about 2 cars would get through. Then, as we tried to abandon the drive, we got stuck on another street that was in much the same condition. The neighborhoods we drove through were probably interesting to walk in, with a lot of funky shops and restaurants, but they were not fun to drive through at less than 5 miles an hour. It took us more time to go 4 miles yesterday than it did for our 10 mile bike ride on Friday afternoon. And it was hot. Our car doesn't have A/C, so the most we could do was roll down the windows, but that is only effective if you are actually moving. Sigh.

We did eventually get out of Toronto and returned to IKEA in time to have dinner in the cafeteria. The Swedish meatballs were pretty good, and fries taste really good when dipped in the gravy that came with the meatballs. After we were properly fortified we picked out our chair. Here it is assembled in our living room and modeled by Cleo. I know I will have to vacuum it a lot to get the white hairs off it, but that is better than trying to scrub tea and coffee stains off of the ecru cushion that was the other option...

The third goal I had was to get some fennel tea. I was introduced to this tea when I was studying in Scotland, and really grew to like it as an after-dinner drink. The problem is that fennel tea is not easily available here. I have looked all over, and have only found it once or twice in 7 years. When my parents went to Scotland on vacation a couple of years ago, I had them bring me back what turned out to be about a year's supply. Louise brought me some from Canada, but it didn't last very long. So, I was determined to find some this trip. Luckily, there was a grocery store next to the IKEA, and I got myself 5 boxes. I am a little worried that this will not be enough, since it is only 100 tea bags, but I guess it will have to do until I can get back to Canada.

We had one last traffic issue last night on our way home: a broken down train in the middle of the town of Bergen. We were less than 10 miles from home when traffic came to a halt. After we had been sitting for about 15 minutes, a sheriff's deputy came by and told us to follow the people in front of us to get back to Brockport. Thus ensued a high speed chase through the dark and back roads on Monroe County, as Benjamin tried to keep up with the caravan in front of us. This was accompanied by the strains of the "William Tell Overture" that happened to come on the radio at the time.

Whew! I think we shall be staying home next weekend!

Ahh, baseball

The other day we went to a Rochester Red Wings baseball game. They are the local minor league team, and are much revered in the area. Since the season is almost over, we figured we ought to go now while the weather is good, rather than waiting until April or May, and possibly get snowed out! It was a nice night - balmy and clear, with a full moon (too early for the eclipse though), and the stadium appeared to be sold out. And, the home team won, which is always a plus (unless of course you are actively rooting for the visiting team, as we usually were at hockey and baseball games in Texas).

We started off the evening with a flowering onion...I really wanted one, and made up my mind that I was going to get one. As usually happens with such things, it was better as an idea than a part of a meal. I would have prefered ordinary onion rings. Oh well, you have to have some junk food at a baseball game! For MA and Liz, yes, I did also have a Zweigle's White Hot, and it was good. Now we just have to get some and cook them ourselves...

The great thing about minor league sports is how close you can get to the game. We got almost the best seats in the house (A little to the left would have been a bit better for seeing around the batter and ump, but I'm not quibbling). The guys in front of us were scorekeepers for the visiting team - the Pawtucket Red Sox. Otherwise, front row.