Cubs 2, Cardinals 2, bottom of the 8th inning.
I know that because for the first time in a long time, I am able to watch baseball. I've signed up for MLB.tv, meaning I can watch 2400 baseball games over the course of the 2006 baseball season. Friends will know that I am only really interested in 162 of them -- the ones that the Chicago Cubs will play.
I love being able to watch the games. In the year before I moved to London, I went to about 30 home ball games and a couple in Milwaukee...
Wait...
I LOVE BASEBALL!!! Derek Lee just hit a home run in the bottom of the 8th to take the lead.
Okay, back to the topic at hand...
So, yes, I went to many a game that year. I'd say over the course of my life, I've been to well over one hundred Chicago Cubs' games.
Since I've been here though, I've had to make due with the odd game broadcased on Channel Five, which is only a Cubs game once in a blue moon. And you have to listen to this moronic English guy gas on about something he just doesn't understand.
I've felt the loss too. I can't talk baseball anymore. I don't konw the numbers or the trends. You can read the papers and trawl the internet for info, but you can't get a feeling for your team or the Major League without watching.
Of course, as great as MLB.tv is, there is one problem which may cause a bit of a problem. I can't choose which team's coverage I get. So, right now I have to watch Cardinals-biased coverage. It sucks. The announcer keeps saying that they hope the Cards can hold on so Pujols can make it to the plate. Eff that!
The other thing, besides the wrongly biased coverage, is the fact that you get weird local commercials, like the commercial for the St. Louis-area supermarket Schnucks. A couple of things come to mind: One, that is a stupid name for anything, but probably fits right in in St. Louis, and two, Schnucks is but one letter away from Schmuck. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, St. Louis!
I need my WGN coverage. So, if any of my loyal readers have some pull with Major League Baseball, can you please figure out a way for me to get WGN coverage whenever I'm watching a game?
UPDATE: CUBS WIN! CUBS WIN! Juan Encarnacion just popped up to second baseman Jerry Hairston Jr to end the game. Go Cubs! Cardinals suck!
Technorati tags: baseball, Chicago Cubs, MLB.tv
Saturday, April 08, 2006
Week in review
Another Saturday, and it could not have come too soon for me. I had an unwieldy week that really wore me down. I'm sure my dedicated readers will remember my last post where I described my strenuous walk through the Darbyshire muck fields. Monday was a Monday, but Monday evening did not go too well. I contracted some sort of stomach bug or I was food poisoned in some way, because... well, just trust me on this one. That carried through Tuesday until Wednesday. I got back to work Wednesday afternoon (I'm such a trooper) where I had to pour over hundreds of sheets of paper with lots of little numbers. Wednesday night was a colleague's leaving party, but I was quite restrained and made it home by 10.30pm.
Thursday night, ahh, Thursday night. What a night! I was wined and dined by corporate Britain, and I loved it. A software developer who makes one of our core products had a party at Madame Tussauds. Had to wear a suit, which I don't get to do very often, and had free food, free drinks and free entertainment compliments of a multi-billion dollar corporation.
I can't remember the last time I went there. I'm not sure I've ever been to Madame Tussauds before. Not really the kind of place I would choose to spend £21.99, just to walk in the door. A couple tons of moulded wax, no matter how realistic, is just not worth it. But I don't mind when the cost is subsidised by the company that just launched "the uOne Media Services Portal to push convergent content services over instant messaging, IPTV and 3G" (and you all know how I feel about convergent content services).
The food was fantastic. They were serving these little pastry parcels with little cuts of steak on top. I'm not sure how you engineer the perfect preparation of a couple thousand little tiny steaks, but whoever figured it out should be given some sort of extravagent gift. The wine left much to be desired, but one should not look a gift-horse in the mouth.
Now, I thought that would be it, but it we were all (400 guests, by the way) guided into a ball room where they were serving real food. Little salmon fillets with a honey glaze, sausages with mashed potatoes and onion gravy, lamb tortilla wraps, noodle salads. There was also a server walking around with small portions of fish and chips wrapped up in the financial jobs section of the Evening Standard. And for desert they had a chocolate fountain and profiteroles and fruit!
The purpose of being wined and dined is to get some face-to-face time with the customer -- namely me (and the others from my particular organisation) -- so when it was all over, the account manager took me and the two other business analysts out in Soho to a blues bar.
I suppose some of my loyal readers will be used to this kind of life. Perhaps you are a doctor, entertained by the pharmaceuticals industry, or you are a politician, entertained by any lobby who can pony up some dough. You are used to slick corporate gigs, but I, a lowly business analyst working for a (large) charity in the UK, am not privy to such socio-commercial events.
I think I may look into attending more of these in the future.
Thursday night, ahh, Thursday night. What a night! I was wined and dined by corporate Britain, and I loved it. A software developer who makes one of our core products had a party at Madame Tussauds. Had to wear a suit, which I don't get to do very often, and had free food, free drinks and free entertainment compliments of a multi-billion dollar corporation.
I can't remember the last time I went there. I'm not sure I've ever been to Madame Tussauds before. Not really the kind of place I would choose to spend £21.99, just to walk in the door. A couple tons of moulded wax, no matter how realistic, is just not worth it. But I don't mind when the cost is subsidised by the company that just launched "the uOne Media Services Portal to push convergent content services over instant messaging, IPTV and 3G" (and you all know how I feel about convergent content services).
The food was fantastic. They were serving these little pastry parcels with little cuts of steak on top. I'm not sure how you engineer the perfect preparation of a couple thousand little tiny steaks, but whoever figured it out should be given some sort of extravagent gift. The wine left much to be desired, but one should not look a gift-horse in the mouth.
Now, I thought that would be it, but it we were all (400 guests, by the way) guided into a ball room where they were serving real food. Little salmon fillets with a honey glaze, sausages with mashed potatoes and onion gravy, lamb tortilla wraps, noodle salads. There was also a server walking around with small portions of fish and chips wrapped up in the financial jobs section of the Evening Standard. And for desert they had a chocolate fountain and profiteroles and fruit!
The purpose of being wined and dined is to get some face-to-face time with the customer -- namely me (and the others from my particular organisation) -- so when it was all over, the account manager took me and the two other business analysts out in Soho to a blues bar.
I suppose some of my loyal readers will be used to this kind of life. Perhaps you are a doctor, entertained by the pharmaceuticals industry, or you are a politician, entertained by any lobby who can pony up some dough. You are used to slick corporate gigs, but I, a lowly business analyst working for a (large) charity in the UK, am not privy to such socio-commercial events.
I think I may look into attending more of these in the future.
Monday, April 03, 2006
Camping in the Peak District, part I
I'm back, safe and sound. This weekend was a little less trecherous than the weekend I spent climbing in Scotland, but it was still a lot of fun.
We drove on Friday night to Edale, a tiny town in Darbyshire. By the time we arrived, all there was time for was a quick drink at a local and the setting up of tents. It was raining and dark and everyone else at the campsite had gone to bed, so we had to struggle through the rain and dark, and do it without waking everyone else up.
I am not accustomed to sleeping out doors. Nor am I accustomed to sleeping next to other men, so I was having quite the experience. Dave, my fellow tent-mate, had to deal with me having a slight panic attack during the middle of the night due to my clausterphobia. I had to wake him when I couldn't manage to get the hatch to the tent open because of the stupied mosquito net. I managed to get it open and stick my head outside for a little while and soon everything was calm. Of course, everyone decided it would be a good thing to make fun of me the next morning when they heard of my struggles. Apparently, I'm the only person in the history of humanity to have a tough time sleeping in a 6'x4'x3' box with another person hogging the precious oxygen.
The next day proved to be soggy and cold, and then dry and cold, and then soggy and warm, and then dry and warm, and then soggy and cold. It was a rich meterological tapestry. We trekked up Kinder Scout. It is quite a place up there. It is a boggy plateau, many square miles in area, with extremely undulating terrain. The mud was so thick in placed that it nearly ate people alive. It was a very strenuous walk because you are constantly fighting to keep you footing, and picking yourself up from the tumbles you take every ten or twenty seconds. There was a number of groups walking here and there, but within minutes of walking, they were completely out of sight. I can see how it is very easy to get lost. When you are up there, you are alone. People can be fifty meters away, and you might have no idea that they are there, because they may be treking along a stream or behind a group of rocks.
We made our way around the plateau and past Kinder Downfall, a waterfall on the plateau's northwest corner. Then we made a long trek home, about two hours, down Jacob's Ladder and along the Pennine Way, back to our camsite near Edale.
I was dead on my feet as we arrived back. For some reason, Dave and I decided to run from the base of Jacob's Ladder to the camp, but we didn't make it very far. It was too wet to gain traction.
I did manage to get to the pub though. Believe me, nothing tastes better after a long, strenuous day out than an beer. For my part, I had two pints of Grey's Best Bitter at The Rambler.
When everyone was assembled, we drove to a pub in Hope, a few miles down the road. I had a steak and ale pie which went down quite well with a few pints of Black Sheep. We went back to The Rambler. I managed to fall asleep while the rest of the crew played card games. They were nice enough to document the disgrace. I'll get that photo to you when I get a chance to make it a bit smaller.
We went home, crawled into bed, and I slept like a baby till the next morning.
More on that later. Till then, here are some photos from me and from Doug.
Technorati tags: Edale, Kinder Scout, Peak District
We drove on Friday night to Edale, a tiny town in Darbyshire. By the time we arrived, all there was time for was a quick drink at a local and the setting up of tents. It was raining and dark and everyone else at the campsite had gone to bed, so we had to struggle through the rain and dark, and do it without waking everyone else up.
I am not accustomed to sleeping out doors. Nor am I accustomed to sleeping next to other men, so I was having quite the experience. Dave, my fellow tent-mate, had to deal with me having a slight panic attack during the middle of the night due to my clausterphobia. I had to wake him when I couldn't manage to get the hatch to the tent open because of the stupied mosquito net. I managed to get it open and stick my head outside for a little while and soon everything was calm. Of course, everyone decided it would be a good thing to make fun of me the next morning when they heard of my struggles. Apparently, I'm the only person in the history of humanity to have a tough time sleeping in a 6'x4'x3' box with another person hogging the precious oxygen.
The next day proved to be soggy and cold, and then dry and cold, and then soggy and warm, and then dry and warm, and then soggy and cold. It was a rich meterological tapestry. We trekked up Kinder Scout. It is quite a place up there. It is a boggy plateau, many square miles in area, with extremely undulating terrain. The mud was so thick in placed that it nearly ate people alive. It was a very strenuous walk because you are constantly fighting to keep you footing, and picking yourself up from the tumbles you take every ten or twenty seconds. There was a number of groups walking here and there, but within minutes of walking, they were completely out of sight. I can see how it is very easy to get lost. When you are up there, you are alone. People can be fifty meters away, and you might have no idea that they are there, because they may be treking along a stream or behind a group of rocks.
We made our way around the plateau and past Kinder Downfall, a waterfall on the plateau's northwest corner. Then we made a long trek home, about two hours, down Jacob's Ladder and along the Pennine Way, back to our camsite near Edale.
I was dead on my feet as we arrived back. For some reason, Dave and I decided to run from the base of Jacob's Ladder to the camp, but we didn't make it very far. It was too wet to gain traction.
I did manage to get to the pub though. Believe me, nothing tastes better after a long, strenuous day out than an beer. For my part, I had two pints of Grey's Best Bitter at The Rambler.
When everyone was assembled, we drove to a pub in Hope, a few miles down the road. I had a steak and ale pie which went down quite well with a few pints of Black Sheep. We went back to The Rambler. I managed to fall asleep while the rest of the crew played card games. They were nice enough to document the disgrace. I'll get that photo to you when I get a chance to make it a bit smaller.
We went home, crawled into bed, and I slept like a baby till the next morning.
More on that later. Till then, here are some photos from me and from Doug.
Technorati tags: Edale, Kinder Scout, Peak District
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