A Softball Win

As I noted yesterday, we had a softball game yesterday evening. We were hoping that things would go our way when we noted the other team had only 9 players. That's not a huge advantage, but we'll take what we can get.

Early on, it really didn't matter. I'm not sure what Kevin, our pitcher was doing, but whatever it was, I hope he bottles it and brings it out for every game. He kept the opponents off balance with infield popups and easy fly balls.

And that's probably the biggest difference between the church softball team and this one--the outfield can catch the ball. Sure, the other team broke on top in the fourth on a ball that was missed by an outfielder, but it was one of those terrible "in-between" balls where you don't know if you need to charge up or lay back, and by time you decide it's past you. That was the only miscue of the night and that outfielder made numerous other catches. It makes a ton of difference to have some confidence the fielders are going to make the plays.

Unfortunately, our bats were pretty quiet the first time through. Seemed like every time someone wound up at first, the next guy grounded to short to force the runner or turn a double play.

After the other team got up 2-0, the next inning the team started to figure out the pitcher and scored three to take our first lead of the season. We tacked on another in the fifth to make it a 4-2 game. That's when Coach Bobby started making changes--reasonable enough. Then he said I was going in to right field.

I'm sure I looked at him like he was nuts. You know all that I just said about the outfield? That is basically the opposite of how I play it. If I get close to a pop fly, we call it a victory. Toss in the fact that the sun was in my eyes and it was a close game, and I was fairly sure this was not going to turn out well.

Thankfully, though, Bobby realized that nothing was being hit out to right. In both innings I was out there, nothing even went to the right side of the infield, I don't believe.

In the top of the seventh, I came up second after Russell drew a walk. The first pitch was outside, giving me a 2-1 count (we start at 1-1 to speed things up). The next pitch was just about perfect. A little inside, enough that I could turn on the pitch and get the barrel of the bat on the ball. A solid shot to left, one that a person with a lot of speed and no runner in front of them might have turned into a double. I settled for a wide turn around first.

Russell and I moved up on a groundout, then the fourth hitter of the inning hit a liner that got down in the outfield. As I'm running (if you can call it that) to third, the third base coach gets windmill arm and sends me home. "Are you nuts?" I'm thinking as I'm trying to get oxygen actually into my body.

Not stopping to argue, I make the turn and get about halfway down the line when I see the throw come in. "This is not good," I think. And I'm hearing, "Slide!" from the dugout. Sliding, though, was really not an option. I've slid once in my life, seven years ago when I was legging out a triple and it was a very ugly thing. I'm pretty sure that it'd have been more of a fall than a slide if I'd have tried it.

Thankfully, though, two things worked in my favor. One, the catcher was set up behind the plate, not in front of it. The second was that he bobbled the throw. I was able to hit the plate in stride around him and score our sixth run.

We tacked on five more (and almost batted around--which wouldn't be good because I was still trying to catch my breath!) and held on to win 11-2. Just a fun game all the way around.

Blog, Interrupted

I’ll return to the riveting way-more-parts-than-I-expected Shoptaw Family Vacation soon, but I thought it would be good to catch you up on what’s going on currently with us.

You’ll notice off to the side there is an Off-Road Tire Softball Schedule. We had so much fun playing church softball, a number of us got together, sponsored by Jon and Russell’s business, to play city fall league softball. The results aren’t much different, but the talent level is a little higher—or at least younger, since we have a number of Tech students playing with us.

I missed the first two games, but made it last Thursday night, and came in around the middle of the game to catch. My first AB, I hit one down the line and took off for first. Unfortunately, I didn’t hear until I made it to the bag that it was foul. I only have so much energy and breath—hate wasting it when I don’t have to! The next pitch I blooped to the outfield, where the fielder couldn’t get a handle on it and I made it to first. The next batter hit one on the ground out toward center. I could see the fielder wasn’t going to pick that up cleanly either so I somehow made it from first to third, seriously gasping when I was standing on third. Wound up scoring on the next batter’s hit.

Second time up, bases loaded, nobody out. Hard to really screw this one up, right? Even a regular double play scores a run. But I lift a fly ball behind second base. Thankfully, the guy on third was alert and scored on the play. As someone said in the dugout, “Don’t see too many sac flys to second!”

Anyway, the game was closer than the scored appeared. We gave up 6 in the first, then battled back. It was a 5 run game going into the last inning, when some miscues and missed calls lead to them scoring four more. The first three batters in our half of the inning got hits, but due to baserunning miscues after those three guys we had two outs, no runs, and a guy on third.

Back to it tonight, this time in the heat of the day. I’m pretty sure I’ll be passed out somewhere around shortstop if I have to go from first to third again!

We had sort of a busy weekend. Friday, we took Sarah to be weighed at the weekly baby weigh-in at the hospital. She is up to 15 lbs, 8 ozs, which is about 6 ozs more than her brother was at three months.

After that, I took the kids home while Meron went to do a Tastefully Simple party. For the most part, they were good, though Sarah got into her screaming fits the last hour or so. Daddy just doesn’t work sometimes, at least for her.

Saturday, Meron was to host a Premiere Jewelry party. A woman at our church sells it in a manner similar to Meron and Tastefully Simple and Meron had agreed at someone else’s party to host one of her own. Unfortunately, the house was really in no condition to have anyone come in, much less a party.

We tried to see if my parents wanted Benjamin for Friday night/Saturday, but they had plans and it wasn’t really going to work out well for them to have him. So I sent Meron and the kids out to their house (since they weren’t going to be around) while I cleaned the kitchen, den and guest bathroom. It wasn’t perfect, of course, but it looked 100% better than it had in the past. Now if we can just keep it that way, I’ll send them away once a month and try to get the rest of the house in order!

Of course, after all that work, after Meron preparing dips and such, after the consultant and her husband coming and setting up everything…..nobody showed up. Meron was pretty disappointed. It does seem like when we host things or invite a large group, few actually make the event. But zero is a record even for us! Still, if we hadn’t had that motivation, the house wouldn’t be in the much better shape that it is now.

And, since the house was presentable and Blake and Kerri had graciously allowed Benjamin to come over to their house and play while Blake and I discussed logistics of some of the changes at church last week, we were able to return the favor and invite Micah (Benjamin’s best buddy) over to our house today. Benjamin was quite looking forward to it, and being that Micah tends to wail anytime Benjamin leaves, I’d bet he is as well.

It’s really hard for me to believe that school is already in session. Having 100 degree days doesn’t help get you in the mindset that fall is coming, either. But football starts this weekend, the county fair should be here in a couple of weeks, and hopefully soon after that we’ll get more 75-80 degree days instead of triple digits.

And, hopefully, I’ll be able to get back to the poker table soon. I’ve not played since a couple of weeks since Sarah was born. I think I might get to a Wednesday ring game, if not this week, then in a couple of weeks, before rejoining the PPT. Good thing I (hopefully) get a Founders’ Exemption into the Shootout, otherwise I’d never make enough points to get in! I don’t think I’ve even played any play money games on line in that time. Which means that the PPT guys are really looking forward to “Dead Money” Shoptaw showing back up!

CardsClubhouse is celebrating its fifth anniversary this week! I’ve been there since, well, basically the opening of the doors and so it’s hard to think that it’s been that long. It’s a great community over there and hopefully it will continue to grow for the next five years!

That’s roughly it for us right now. I may have more updates before we finish up with the Ohio and trip home portions of our vacation, but hopefully I can get them done soon!

Shoptaw Family Vacation 4: The Grizzlies Game

It's been a heck of a long day by this point, and if it weren't for the fact that I was meeting up with some of the Clubhouse crew at the Grizzlies game, I might have thought about crashing in the hotel room. No time for that, though, as we dropped our Cardinal stuff off in the room, grabbed the keys and the directions, and headed for Illinois. Meron and Sarah, like they did when Benjamin and I went to the stadium, stayed at the hotel. It was the first hotel Meron had been to with room service, so that's what she did for dinner as a special treat.

My friend and URL member Mike was working as an intern for the Gateway Grizzlies this summer. The Grizzlies are an independent league team in the St. Louis suburb of Sauget, Illinois. (Interestingly, this meant that Benjamin made it to Illinois before Meron did, since she'd never been there until our travels the next day.) It seemed like the best place to meet the moderating talent of CardsClubhouse.

We follow our directions carefully and have no problems finding the stadium. Most of the gang is already there and have grabbed up the picnic table reserved in Benjamin's name, so David meets us at the gate, gives us our tickets, and leads us to the table. You can see our view in this picture:


Dana (msredbird51) was already there, hanging out with David and his family. Dana is dating Mike, so she did a lot of the arranging for tickets, etc. Not too long after we got there, the Big Guy, Wayne (Roark1138), the site creator and owner, appeared with his family.

Here they are, in their glory. (Well, David and Wayne, at least. Dana told me in no uncertain terms a picture of her better not appear up here.) David first, then Wayne.

We had a great time talking, eating, somewhat watching the game. It was pretty sticky and hot at the beginning of the evening, but a storm must have skirted the area, because the breeze picked up and the temperature dropped to reasonable levels. Between that and the cloud cover, it was the coolest I'd been all day, at least outside.

We even called Deb (NJCards), who was supposed to join us but got stuck with some BBQ thing. Benjamin played with one of David's son who had three small plastic caps and, using a water bottle top, was playing the "cap dance". Benjamin would keep guessing where the top was and loved it when he got it right.


After such a long day, though, we couldn't stay for the whole game, and the boy and I left around the fifth inning or so. Got in the van, got our directions and headed back for St. Louis in a routine (by now) experience. Um, not so much.

See, the last line in my instructions said "Get on I-70 ramp." While this seemed strange to me, I thought perhpas there would be a road off of that to get to the Sheraton's parking garage. Not so much. This, of course, is the whole reason I print out instructions, so a low-level panic hits me as I get back on the interstate, heading away from my hotel.

The next exit looks familiar, though (turns out it was the one I used to start our trip to the Grizzlies) and I take it. At the end of the ramp, though, it's decision time. Right or left. I choose left. Almost immediately I see a Hampton Inn, so I swing in to get directions. A security guard at the Hampton tells me I need to go straight down the street I'm on and I'll it it. Fair enough. I make the left turn eventually and head down the road.

What she didn't tell me (and probably didn't know) was that most of that street was blocked off for some sort of street fair. So I followed the traffic, looking for a cross street that would take me over the block I needed to go.

Once I did that, though, I saw that the street was blocked off that far as well. So I had to loop around a couple more times before I went far enough one way to cross the blocked-off street and get around to a street that would take me to the Sheraton. It wasn't nearly as bad as it could have been, but it didn't do wonders for my mood, let me tell you.

What was helpful was that Benjamin fell asleep before all of this excitement, so I didn't have to listen to him ask me where we were going or get scared (if he would have). I roused him when I got back to the hotel and got him down to the room. Meron changed him into his pajamas and told him to get into the bed. This is as far as he got:

So, after being up for close to 20 hours, with blisters on my feet from all the walking, drenched clothes from all the sweating, and one worn-out kid, the day in St. Louis came to a close. Totally worth it! A great time, on the whole, and we are thinking about taking a family vacation up there one of these years.

Shoptaw Family Vacation 3: Downtown St. Louis

After finally getting out of the zoo, we drove into St. Louis to our hotel. I had gotten it off of Hotwire for a pretty good price and was glad to see that it was the Sheraton and it was very easy to get to. We followed the directions, drove into the parking deck (which was interesting to navigate with a van!) and I got out to get the room keys.

I go down to the lobby. Let me tell you, I felt quite underdressed in shorts and a Cardinal shirt, sweating profusely, walking into that place. Of course, I get to the front desk and they need a credit card, even though the room is paid for already, for incidentals. Somehow, the card has been left in the van. So back up to the parking deck, where I had left the family. After we get that straightened out, we find out our room is on the eighth floor. The van is on the third, just for reference.

We get to the room and are pleasantly surprised with how big it is. No view, but that was OK. A king-sized bed, a chair and a small couch with plenty of room to move around. Which is good, because I have to make three or four trips back to the van to get everything out of it that we are going to need.

After I do that, Benjamin and I take off. I've been in touch with my friend David, known as Oberkfell3B on the Clubhouse boards. He and his family are going to meet us at the Cardinal team store and Benjamin and I are going to take the Metrolink there. I figure Benjamin will enjoy it, being that it's basically a train and all.

It's only after I get to the Metrolink station catty-corner to the hotel that I realize I have no clue what I am doing. I've never taken public transportation alone in my life. After going down to the train platform, I realize that I've missed the ticket machine, so we go back up and get tickets. Then, back to the platform.

On the platform, there are two tracks. For two trains. Which run in completely opposite directions, of course. I finally ask a lady there which one I need to be on to head toward the stadium. I'm not sure she was a local, but she pointed me in the right direction. When the train pulled up, we got on (though couldn't find anyone to give my ticket to) and headed down to the new Busch Stadium.

We got off at the stadium stop, crossed the street, and there it was. After seeing it so many times in pictures and on TV, it was great to actually be there. We stopped at the Musial statue, of course, and called David to make sure that the team store was where I thought it was. We were within sight of the place, so we went on around the corner and went in.

After meeting David, his wife and kids, Benjamin and I looked around and basically went nuts. I wound up with an Adam Wainwright T-shirt, Sarah got a Cardinal dress she can wear next year, Meron got a pen (hey, it was hard to find her something!) and Benjamin cleaned up with a Scott Rolen banner, a Rolen T-shirt, and a new Cardinal hat.

When we came out, we took some pictures of the other statues around the park. I've taken some before when I've been up there, but it was neat to get them with Benjamin.

This isn't the best picture of him (he's doing his "shy routine" where he puts his hands in front of his eyes like he's tired) but he is in front of Ozzie Smith, who was my favorite player growing up, so I had to use this one.

Loaded down with Cardinal goodies, we now made the trek to the Gateway Arch. I'm not sure David thought we were going to walk down there, but being that Benjamin had no car seat with us, there really wasn't much option. He was gracious enough to walk with us and sent his family in the car to meet us down there. We walked the 5-6 blocks, me with Benjamin perched on his shoulders, until we reached the riverfront and the monument.

The last time I went to see the Arch was probably about 20 years ago. Like Benjamin said, "It's big!" He didn't really want to have much to do with it after we saw it. I finally got him to touch it and pose for a couple of pictures.

I remember my first trip going and realizing that the base "block", if you will, was taller than I was. I'm not much taller than that base section now! Benjamin still says "We saw that" when the Arch comes on TV, so I think he enjoyed going as well.

We walked with David over toward the Arch Metrolink station, then got on the train (again, no one took the ticket--why didn't anyone tell me you could just ride for free!) and made it back to the hotel with most of the day done, but still one more activity to go: the Grizzlies game.

Shoptaw Family Vacation, Part 2: St. Louis Zoo

Obviously, anyone that knows me knows St. Louis dominates my mental landscape, as the Cardinals are always at the forefront of discussion. My family and I went a couple of times when I was a kid, hitting a few of the major things and taking in Cardinal games, but it'd been probably close to 20 years since I'd done more than go up for a game and come back right after.

Add to that that Meron and I have never done anything but go to Ohio for vacations and the fact that St. Louis is in the midpoint of our trip (if we go that way), and it seemed logical that we should take the time and go visit. Benjamin is old enough to appreciate the trip, they have a zoo (a must for my wife and son), etc.

Unfortunately, we had to make the trip on one of the hottest possible days of the year. It was 95 at least while we were walking around the zoo. As we got in, it was time to feed Sarah so I sat down and did that while Meron took Benjamin and started looking for animals. I caught up to them around the penquin exhibit, and I made sure to duck inside that for a few minutes, since it was more like 30 degrees in there! Needless to say, that was quite a popular place to be that day!

After looking at some more animals, we decided that Meron and Benjamin should ride the carousel. Benjamin in the past hasn't enjoyed those as much as you'd think, but this one was a lot of fun, probably because the giraffe that they rode didn't go up and down as the ride went around. This is also where we found out that the camera batteries are about to go out, causing us to scour the gift shops for batteries.

After the ride, we headed for lunch. Thankfully, there was an indoor, air-conditioned cafe we could eat at. We got our food (good, but of course fairly pricey) and enjoyed the break from the heat. While eating, it was decided that Meron and Benjamin would go look for the giraffes, then ride the train and see the other animals while Sarah and I would stay in the cool.

That worked out well for me (save the dirty diaper I had to change) but not so well for them. They couldn't find the giraffes, the train didn't go around the animals like they thought it would, and the train went in tunnels long enough that Meron was a little scared.

When they returned, I put Benjamin on my shoulders and took off to find the giraffes. By this time, the clock is ticking, as I wanted to make sure I could meet up with my friend David downtown and do things there before the Grizzlies game that night. So we head off and find the giraffes, plus the zebras, leopards and other animals in that area. Then he wanted to go see the elephants, but they were on the other side of the zoo, so I talked him out of that (and he had seen them from a distance on the train trip, anyway).

We finished up with souvenirs and had someone take a family picture. By this time, I've exhaused the little patience I have for the zoo, I'm tired, my feet hurt, I'm hot. Let's just say I probably wasn't the most pleasant to be around. But the wife wanted the picture, so we have it:

That's Benjamin being shy. Anytime he is confronted with a stranger talking to him, he tends to put his hands to his eyes like he's tired. It takes him a while to warm up to people--problem was, we only got one shot at a picture!

More on St. Louis, Ohio, and various other things in the days to come!

Shoptaw Family Vacation, Part 1: The Trip Up

I figured the St. Louis/Ohio vacation would be best broken into various sections, so as to not overwhelm you with either verbage or pictures. So we'll start with the beginning. Seems like a very good place to start.

After getting the whole van thing situated, Meron did a lot of the packing of the vehicle Thursday night, so there was little to take out Friday morning. This is a good thing, because "Friday morning" was just barely that, as the alarm went off at about 2:30. As my wife likes to say, "Those are not the wee hours but the wee wee hours, because the only reason you should be up is to wee wee."

Benjamin had thrown a fit Thursday night during packing when we didn't leave right then. I think he was all excited about the van and everything. However, I wasn't going to take off without at least a couple of hours of sleep. I think I wound up with 4 1/2 not solid hours, which was enough to get us there.

That said, about 30 minutes up the road, it was "I want to go home". That was a refrain that we heard occasionally during the first part of the trip. He got over it, though, and settled into to watching DVDs once the sun came up.

Sarah, for the most part, did pretty well also. She slept a lot on the way up, fussing usually around bottle time. We were able to make them up in the car, so it didn't slow us down much in the drive.

We didn't have any problems (of course, thanks to our Google maps!) getting to the zoo in St. Louis. We hit it about 10:45 or so, which meant we made reasonable time. More on the St. Louis bit in another post.

Saturday morning, we left out of St. Louis a little before 8 AM. We stopped early in Illinois for breakfast (I think the only part of Illinois that Meron saw, as she was conked out soon afterwards!), drove through Indiana and wound up in Columbus close to 4 PM (EDT). Took the wrong exit in Columbus, but thankfully it was just farther down the same road we needed to be on and we could call Meron's friends to talk us into the ice cream place.

After we left there, we drove down to Meigs County, where Meron's family is. That was the worst part of the drive. It's a nice drive usually, and Meron actually drove most of it (after I got us out of Columbus--she's worse about driving in big cities than I am). Unfortunately, Sarah apparently was getting tired of driving, because she fussed quite loudly most of the way down there. I tried distracting her some and it worked to a point, but we were very glad to get her out of the car. She didn't settle completely down, but at least we weren't in a closed-in space with her!

All in all, the drive up was smooth. The van was nice and all that room really panned out well. The kids were, on the most part, really well behaved. I think Benjamin got on Meron's nerves some as she was sitting back there with him, but they didn't bother me up in the front, and Sarah didn't go on any crying jags when I was dealing with big cities, so I was happy!

To Tide You Over

We're still working on getting the pictures up and finding time to sit down and blog, but my friend Wayne took this picture of Benjamin at the Grizzlies game in St. Louis, so I thought I'd share it. Personally, I love it!

More Later, But....

...just a note to say that the family and I have returned home safely, without too many major incidents save the ones we planned. Numerous posts and pictures (including ones by our newest photographer, Benjamin) will be up soon when I get the chance to sit down and process them all. Thanks for the prayers for safe passage!

A Little Too Prophetic

I knew that I had gotten a little close on predicting things on my Cardinal blog recently, but I hate it when it carries over here. Remember when I said travel to Ohio always provided its challenges? Well, this year, they started before we even left the city.

My parents had insisted that we take their car to Ohio. That worked for us because the back seat was big enough for both car seats and Meron, so she could keep an eye on the kids, feed Sarah a bottle if necessary, etc. Everything was good to go, but the car was acting up a little bit, so Dad took it in to be serviced.

The car was supposed to return this morning, but apparently while the mechanics were putting everything back together, something broke in the transmission. This was something that, of course, they didn't have a part for, so it wouldn't be ready until tomorrow.

This, of course, put the proverbial spanner into the works. We thought we could take Meron's car if we had to, but the "service engine" light has been on since we got it, even though we've had it checked a couple of times. Finally, my parents, in their amazing generosity, decided they'd rent us a car for the week. The Enterprise here (which I called right after returning the PT Cruiser--my car should be ready Friday or so) didn't have a van, but the one down in Conway did.

So Meron and I packed up, ran some necessary errands (including getting my driver's license renewed) and finally left out of here around noon. Picked up the SUV (I think it's more of that than a van) and Meron drove it home.

Hopefully, that's the extent of our Ohio troubles this year. Hopefully.

You Say It's Your Birthday

Another birthday, another blog entry. 32 doesn't quite bring the self-reflection of 30, more the "yep, another year" attitude of 31. I will say my hope that the year of 31 was better than the year of 30 came to pass; no major illnesses and the birth of Sarah. I'd take that tradeoff any time.

What's really hard to grasp is that this is the third birthday I've blogged! Time really does fly when you are having fun. I'm guessing also that time has really drug for those of you having to read this stuff! But I do appreciate those that check in from time to time to see what's going on.

We're continuing to make the final preparations for our trip tomorrow. Meron's done a great job of getting lists made up, suitcases packed, etc. I've got the trip directions printed out (thank you, Google Maps!) because I don't navigate anywhere (past the Fayetteville-Little Rock corridor) without them. I'm one of those people that starts checking for the next turn on the directions about 20 minutes before it comes up and continually re-checks until we make it. Probably drives Meron crazy, since she's usually in charge of reading the directions off to me.

We also bought a prepaid cell phone to make sure we both had a cell phone in case we get split up (which we probably will at the zoo, especially) and I think I'm going to go the prepaid VISA route for most of our money, keeping the convenience of a debit/credit card with the knowledge we can't spend too much. I'm thinking except for gas and St. Louis, this shouldn't be a terribly expensive trip.

That said, please keep us in your prayers, because our trips to Ohio never seem to run smooth. When we used to fly up there, we always had trouble getting a rental car. Since we've started driving, obviously that issue is not valid, but we seem to have other troubles. Christmas 2004, the alternator went out on the car while we were up there, and then in June of 2005, the last time I actually went to Ohio, we had tire issues on the way back home. So traveling up there is never routine. I hope the surprise this time is that nothing happens!

Also, we won't have much, if any, internet access while we are up that way, so I don't expect there will be another blog entry until we return. Try to survive, OK? I'd think there will be pictures of Sarah with her grandparents and Benjamin under the Arch then, so check back somewhere around the 12th! Take care!