Stuff That Isn't Doctor Who

[exhilaration]

Well, let's see. So, this was a holiday weekend (July 4th, Independence Day, if you're not American and don't immediately know which holiday I mean) and it's the busiest weekend of the whole year here at the shore. Of course I had to work. I worked at the Coffee Co on Friday morning and then worked lunch and dinner at the restaurant. So no, I didn't see any fireworks - I could easily see the Atlantic City fireworks from my house, or from the beach behind my house. But I wasn't there, I was at work, bored out of my mind, cause who eats in a restaurant on a picnic holiday?

And then Saturday I also worked at the Coffee Co, even though Saturday is not my day. It was the store in town, too - I guess some of those employees needed off for the holiday or something, and so I filled in. Thanks, of course I don't celebrate holidays or anything, geez, Renee. But Saturday night, oh, I let another host take the last part of my shift cause I had some TV to watch. Go me :P

Ah, wait, this was supposed to be stuff that ISNT Doctor Who.

On Friday Bevan asked me if I would like to go to a baseball game with him because he had an extra ticket. Now, I've said pretty many times I really don't care about sports. I don't hate sports, I'm not into sports, I simply don't care one way or the other about them. But watching live sports can be really fun, especially in Philly, because the fans are all insane. Completely and totally insane. I can say stuff like that because I'm not from Philadelphia.

But, Lara, you are in New Jersey.

Yeah well, if you don't know my area of the world very well, here's the thing about New Jersey: it sucks. North Jersey wishes they were New York, and South Jersey wishes they were Philadelphia. New Jersey doesn't have its own baseball team, either, so, it seems everyone around here is hard-core into the Phillies. The Phillies played the Mets this weekend. (The Phillies are the Philadelphia team, the Mets are the New York team, and the fans are huge rivals, see?)

So you can see, possibly, how the idea of attending this game might appeal to me, right?

Actually, I don't know what I was thinking, wanting to go to this game. Baseball is very boring to watch, and this game, specifically, was very slow moving, and besides, why would I want to sit in a crowded stadium and - I'm getting ahead of myself here.

First we'll start with, why did Bevan have an extra ticket? Oh, of course it was supposed to be Jory's ticket (apparently, Jury is spelled Jory because it seems to be short for Jordan, which I did not know until yesterday) and I was just like, oh, great, that will go over really well, she won't go with you because she's mad at you still, and so you give the ticket to me, perfect. But he insisted it wasn't a big deal, and I caved, although I'm still a little uncertain about it.

And she still went to see the game, too, she actually bought another ticket somehow and went with other people, and she knows we were there together - I don't know why I feel like this is such a big deal. It's not like I'm trying to steal her boyfriend away or anything. Or her ex-boyfriend, or whatever is going on with them now.

I looked on youtube for some videos of the fan antics at the game, but none are posted (yet). Ah, I'll get to that in a bit.

So I really did go to a baseball game with Bevan and four of his friends. I was feeling all day like maybe it wasn't a good idea. The walk from the parking lot to our seats was like a mile, at least, and I had to go up three flights of stairs, and I was tired to begin with from my jam-packed work schedule and lack of sleep (even though I really haven't been going out or anything) and I kept feeling like I was just being a pain in the ass for moving so slow and slowing everyone down. Sometimes I get pissed when people invite me places and don't take this kind of thing into account, but I can't even get that irritated because Bevan did think about it - we were tailgating in the parking lot before the game, just a little bit, like, we brought a six pack and that's it, arrived just an hour or so early, and after ten minutes or so Bevan suggested that he and I just start walking to the stadium right away and let everyone else catch up. But really, that just made me feel guilty, because then he was pretty much skipping tailgating with his friends, but he insisted it was fine and he would drink his beer on the way through the parking lot. Because of course we had to park a million miles away. And then once we got inside the stadium we had to walk around like two thirds of it or something. And I did mention three floors up, right? Yeah. It was pretty brutal.

Then after about an hour I got really uncomfortable sitting in the stadium seat, and it was also very, very hot outside. I really did plan for the weather, I wore a tank top and my favorite cool pants with the little tiny holes in them, and I also brought a sweatshirt AND an umbrella (more on THAT later...) but it was also very, very hot, and my body just isn't all that great at regulating it's own temperature. Eventually I took off my shoes and socks, and, at one point, when there were no people sitting in front of us, I put my feet up on the seats in front of me to try to cool off a little. It didn't really help.

So there's a very, very slow moving baseball game going on, I mean, inning after inning with no runs at all, and then there's a bunch of crazy fans all around me heckling each other - Philadelphia, if you didn't know, is known for being the city who boos it's own team, by the way. But we also boo the Mets and their fans. So there are various "Mets suck" chants starting up here and there, and then there's the Philly Phanatic (that's the team mascot, kind of like a big green Big Bird-like creature) beating up on a Mets hat and all that fun stuff.

So then it started to rain. Great, for the first half hour, or so. I cooled off and instantly felt so much better. Could actually pay a little more attention to the stuff going on in the field. Oh, except that once it really started raining, they stopped playing and put a tarp out and called it a rain delay. Oh yeah, that. We weren't getting rained on because we were sitting under a roof, so at this point I wasn't totally soaked, and we goofed off a little, and then some things of note happened, one, a crazy Phillies fan ran out on the field (major no-no, every troublemaker's dream) and did a slip-and-slide on the tarp (which did look incredibly fun, I mean, it's like the biggest slip-and-slide ever) and then, instead of running back into the stadium, and possibly escaping security, he, for some reason, decided to dive into the tube the tarp had been rolled around. Yeah. Real bright. So security just stuck one guy at one end of the tube and one guy at the other, and, you know, eventually he had to come out, and they arrested him.

Two, some guys were doing some dances for us a few rows up, out in the rain. At first, they were really irritating me, because the one guy was wearing a Geno's shirt (and I guess if you're not from Philly you don't know Geno's...)

Geno's is one of the two famous places to get a Philly cheesesteak. The other place is called Pat's. But Geno's is the place that posted a sign saying that you cannot buy a cheesesteak unless you order it in English. You cannot speak some other language with the only common word being "cheesesteak" and you cannot just point to what you want.

This is a big deal. A lot of people were hugely offended by this, even if their own English was perfect. Hell, MY English is perfect and I thought it was pretty obnoxious, and besides, cheesesteaks come from South Philly, and South Philly is where the Italians live. The founders of Geno's didn't speak English themselves, they were immigrants just like everyone else in the neighborhood. So, yeah. Lots of controversy about the place, and then here's this guy wearing a shirt that says "I order in English because I'm American" on the front and "Geno's" on the back...

But eventually, the silliness of their antics began to entertain me, and, as the rain continued and the game did not, they became the only available entertainment for our entire section of the stadium. Also, at this point, it was after the seventh inning, so that's kind of like last call. No more beer could be sold in the stadium, and the game was indefinitely stalled.

So they did the electric slide and the hustle and the YMCA and the chicken dance and the macarena, and then some of the crowd had the idea to sing the hokey-pokey, and they did that too :P It was pretty goofy.

So then the rain started to let up and they started putting the tarp away, but as soon as they had it off the field they put it right back on, cause...

You see it went from rain to RAIN, as in, rain from every direction, heavy and torrential and clouds down on the ground so everything everywhere was just his grey mass, and we couldn't even see the rain clouds in the sky to see how close they were to passing us because everything was just grey, and, even with an umbrella, I got completely soaked. NOT FUN.

The million mile walk and the thousand steps (and not having a single beer in the parking lot) I could handle. The stadium seat killing my back, ok, to be expected. The intolerable heat and dizzyness that resulted, and seriously, I took off my shoes, fine, whatever, this game was a big deal, and I said I wanted the ticket, so, damnit, I was going to have a good time! All these things I could take.

Being soaking wet and slimy and having rain pelt me from every direction, sitting in an uncomfortable stadium seat with no clue whether or not the game was even going to continue at all - just no. And I was not the only one deciding this was no good - people were starting to talk about leaving. After two whole hours of waiting in the rain, maybe we would leave. And I did almost leave. Bevan said he was staying, some of his friends were going and said I could come with them, but then the guy said he thought I lived in Bevan's neighborhood, and I don't, and then I got kind of freaked out that maybe I was annoying him by acting like of course he would drive me home, which was totally out of their way, and was like, no wait, I changed my mind, I'm staying!

And so me and Bevan and his other friend stood around under the stadium (out of the rain) and waited to see if it would let up before dark. This is where we saw Jory, and it wasn't THAT awkward, but it wasn't exactly peachy either. After another half hour the rain turned back to a drizzle, and we went and sat down in a lower level (cause so many people had left) but still under a roof, and waited for them to get the field ready again, which was another half hour or so. And the whole place kind of quieted down, because it was pretty empty, so me and Bevan just sat around and talked until they started the game again. It was pretty nice.

The game lasted twelve innings. This is absurdly long. A normal game is nine. And the rain delay was three hours. So, yeah. Very, very long day. And oh, also, Philly lost, so, blegh. Afterwards they were talking about going to a bar in South Philly but after driving around in the traffic from the game and then looking for parking and seeing that all the bars were already completely packed, we just went back over the bridge to Jersey.

And... I totally have a parking thingy. We totally could have parked in any of the handicapped spaces, I mean, there's like two in every block and NONE of them were occupied but see... I just wanted to go home, so I kept my parking pass to myself and did not mention it.

And then I didn't even go home. Me and Bevan went to Best Buy, still soaking wet, and bought this Wii game, Bomb Blox, I think it's called, and went back to his house and played it until, oh, midnight or something, and then I slept over, just like in the olden days. I even borrowed dry clothes from him.

He said something kind of weird to me too, he was like, "see, this is what guys do when they fight with their girlfriends," and I was just like 0.o?

What does that even mean? That we're both guys or something? Cause I'm most definitely a girl. That we're both fighting with our girlfriends? Cause Erica is not my girlfriend, and we're not fighting at this point, we're kind of just... not hanging around each other, I don't know. Maybe I've pissed her off irreparably, and this is the end of our friendship, because I can be such a turd. But she is the one who came over without calling - damnit, that sounds like such a stupid thing to blow this far out of proportion, doesn't it?

And this morning Bevan took me home, I went inside to change, and he drove me to work, and I took the trolley home and passed the fuck out on my couch and woke up about an hour ago. My sleep is so completely skewed, it's pretty hopeless at this point, isn't it?

And for the record, there was NO RANDOM DRUNKEN SEX. That is the absolute LAST thing I need in my life right now. Absolutely the last.