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Things that don't and do suck
Aug. 11th, 2010 06:55 pmSo yesterday I decided to just take a me day and not hang out with anyone. No Mike, no friends, no nothing. This is more normal in Japan and not so normal here (especially since every day is a Mike day in one way or another).
I slept in until noon (I was up until 5am finishing reading the Harry Kalas book I'd read 3/4 of on the plane ride here, because I don't want to lug it back with me to Japan), lazily got ready and made myself some lunch, and around 3pm I drove to Lynnwood because I wanted to go to Funtasia for their batting cages, and to Alderwood for some mild shopping.
Funtasia is a totally ghetto arcade, relatively speaking, but I've always liked their batting cages for some reason. It's $1 per token or $5 for 6 tokens, and each token gets you somewhere between 12-15 pitches. Plus, the cages are spacious and have a good variety of fast/slow baseball/softball and all of them are lefty-righty. You just never see that kind of thing in Japan, where 95% of the cages are fast-pitch righty-batting baseball and nothing else.
I ended up doing 12 tokens in the end, for like 150 pitches or so... it's just that the first 6 went by so fast. I was made to wear a helmet during my first game, then just would pause a little between games, and do another. I was hitting the ball okay and even getting some nice "home run" hits over the pitching machine.
So after the first 6, I'm like "I wanna play a few more, but... is there any point in only buying 3 tokens when I can just spend 2 more bucks and get 6 again?"
All in all, 12 pitching rounds only took me like an hour, anyway.
I feel good about my hitting given how long it's been, and I was even practicing pulling the ball to right a little for fun. I did feel bad for the Funtasia staffers who have to watch to make sure the batting cage is working and the people using it are wearing helmets, though. There were some young girls trying to bat too, but their parents didn't understand the "fast" and "slow" settings. Poor kids.
After that I went to Alderwood, where I looked for a few things to wear to school basically, which I found. And after a bit of going around a few stores I went to the place I was really aiming for -- the New Balance store. See, I bought a pair of 993's back in February before going back to Japan. I love them -- I used to have 992's and they were great, so getting a pair of 993's made me really happy. Except they're like $140...
...and a week ago or so I noticed a hole in the toe of my right shoe. WTF.
So I went back to the store to tell them what happened, how I'd only had the shoes 5 months and they already developed a hole, is that normal? I didn't have a receipt or anything, but as it turns out, I told the guy my name and bizarrely he had a "Diane Rubin" in the system for having bought 993's and green Superfeet pretty much the exact time I said I bought mine, and that was the only name even remotely matching. Our guess is that because I'd gone to Bell Square first and they called Alderwood to reserve the shoes there, the name went in wrong.
So he was really nice and basically said "What I can do for you is, if you want to replace them, I'll give you a 50% discount on the new pair because it's so soon. I think that's the best I can do, sorry -- we don't really HAVE trade-ins after 30 days..."
I was more than happy to do that -- I went in expecting to spend $140 on a new pair so was overjoyed to only spend half.
It was really pretty nice of him to do that -- a stunning example of customer service that I don't feel I've run into in the US in a very long time.
Anyway, a bit after that I came home, and a bit after that I went and got Mike at the airport (his flight got in around 11pm). The end.
Today I spent the morning checking out the Fred Meyer near here (it's nice) and grabbed lunch from Chipotle. In the afternoon I went to take a walk around Lake Sammamish, to try it out. Because of where we live (at the top of a hill almost 2 miles from the lake), I drove there and parked by the trail. But the trail made me sad because you can't really SEE the lake -- the trail is an old railway bed and between the trail and the lake is rich people's houses with tons of "NO TRESSPASSING" signs.
To make it worse, while I was leaning on a fence in a shady area taking a photo of one of the particularly crazy "NO TRESSPASSING" signs...
...a bird pooped on me.
Ugh.
It got on my left sleeve and splattered on my arm a bit. Ewwwwww.
So I had to walk back to the car (I was already 15-20 mins away) and then drive home and then frantically try to see if it'd wash out. It seems to have -- I put all my clothes in the laundry after that and it looks okay now but still EWWWWWWWW.
So, not sure I like this trail thing. Maybe there is a nicer part of it where you can actually see the lake for real. I may have to go back with a bike sometime.
I slept in until noon (I was up until 5am finishing reading the Harry Kalas book I'd read 3/4 of on the plane ride here, because I don't want to lug it back with me to Japan), lazily got ready and made myself some lunch, and around 3pm I drove to Lynnwood because I wanted to go to Funtasia for their batting cages, and to Alderwood for some mild shopping.
Funtasia is a totally ghetto arcade, relatively speaking, but I've always liked their batting cages for some reason. It's $1 per token or $5 for 6 tokens, and each token gets you somewhere between 12-15 pitches. Plus, the cages are spacious and have a good variety of fast/slow baseball/softball and all of them are lefty-righty. You just never see that kind of thing in Japan, where 95% of the cages are fast-pitch righty-batting baseball and nothing else.
I ended up doing 12 tokens in the end, for like 150 pitches or so... it's just that the first 6 went by so fast. I was made to wear a helmet during my first game, then just would pause a little between games, and do another. I was hitting the ball okay and even getting some nice "home run" hits over the pitching machine.
So after the first 6, I'm like "I wanna play a few more, but... is there any point in only buying 3 tokens when I can just spend 2 more bucks and get 6 again?"
All in all, 12 pitching rounds only took me like an hour, anyway.
I feel good about my hitting given how long it's been, and I was even practicing pulling the ball to right a little for fun. I did feel bad for the Funtasia staffers who have to watch to make sure the batting cage is working and the people using it are wearing helmets, though. There were some young girls trying to bat too, but their parents didn't understand the "fast" and "slow" settings. Poor kids.
After that I went to Alderwood, where I looked for a few things to wear to school basically, which I found. And after a bit of going around a few stores I went to the place I was really aiming for -- the New Balance store. See, I bought a pair of 993's back in February before going back to Japan. I love them -- I used to have 992's and they were great, so getting a pair of 993's made me really happy. Except they're like $140...
...and a week ago or so I noticed a hole in the toe of my right shoe. WTF.
So I went back to the store to tell them what happened, how I'd only had the shoes 5 months and they already developed a hole, is that normal? I didn't have a receipt or anything, but as it turns out, I told the guy my name and bizarrely he had a "Diane Rubin" in the system for having bought 993's and green Superfeet pretty much the exact time I said I bought mine, and that was the only name even remotely matching. Our guess is that because I'd gone to Bell Square first and they called Alderwood to reserve the shoes there, the name went in wrong.
So he was really nice and basically said "What I can do for you is, if you want to replace them, I'll give you a 50% discount on the new pair because it's so soon. I think that's the best I can do, sorry -- we don't really HAVE trade-ins after 30 days..."
I was more than happy to do that -- I went in expecting to spend $140 on a new pair so was overjoyed to only spend half.
It was really pretty nice of him to do that -- a stunning example of customer service that I don't feel I've run into in the US in a very long time.
Anyway, a bit after that I came home, and a bit after that I went and got Mike at the airport (his flight got in around 11pm). The end.
Today I spent the morning checking out the Fred Meyer near here (it's nice) and grabbed lunch from Chipotle. In the afternoon I went to take a walk around Lake Sammamish, to try it out. Because of where we live (at the top of a hill almost 2 miles from the lake), I drove there and parked by the trail. But the trail made me sad because you can't really SEE the lake -- the trail is an old railway bed and between the trail and the lake is rich people's houses with tons of "NO TRESSPASSING" signs.
To make it worse, while I was leaning on a fence in a shady area taking a photo of one of the particularly crazy "NO TRESSPASSING" signs...
...a bird pooped on me.
Ugh.
It got on my left sleeve and splattered on my arm a bit. Ewwwwww.
So I had to walk back to the car (I was already 15-20 mins away) and then drive home and then frantically try to see if it'd wash out. It seems to have -- I put all my clothes in the laundry after that and it looks okay now but still EWWWWWWWW.
So, not sure I like this trail thing. Maybe there is a nicer part of it where you can actually see the lake for real. I may have to go back with a bike sometime.
