Most of the weekend.
I got a lot of cool stuff yesterday.
Okay, so I stayed up too late Friday night, and![[profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
damienroc showed up here around 9 or 10am. I went back to sleep for another hour, then got up and we went out to Redmond for the U.S.S. Mariner pizza feed, which was a 5-hour gathering of baseball geeks who read the USSM.
I was pretty scared at first heading in; we got feed surveys, and picked up some pizza and soda, and then as I was walking along past a table, I saw Josh (Buergel) there, so it was like, yay, I know someone else here too! (If I'd thought about it, I would have asked Josh on Thursday whether he was going, but I forgot) So Jeff and I sat down with Josh, who was at a table of completely random people, none of whom I ever caught the names of. I guess we had some intra-table chatting a little, but not much. Some lady did come by and comment on my Kendall shirt, like "Nice shirt. I have one too!" We ate pizza and filled out the surveys.
Around 1pmmish, Derek and Dave and Jason (the guys who run the site) got up, talked a little, and then fielded Mariners-related and USSM-related questions for an hour or so. It was very amusing. They talked a lot about specific players, signings, lineups, some stuff that had come up on the site, etc, lots of funny stuff. They spent a lot of time of course talking about Beltre and Sexson, and then a lot of time explaining exactly why they love and hate Randy Winn and expect him to be traded, and so on. Jason nodded towards me when someone asked about the Kendall trade, but I had been looking for my soda cup so I didn't actually hear what he said before it, oops. I finally got up the courage to ask a question towards the end, which was, namely, "Hey, so like, you guys totally ignored Texas the whole time you've been talking about the AL West -- do you think they just overperformed this year, or what?" To which Derek was like "Well, you know, if their entire team was their infield, I'd totally think they were great! But, uh, no."
They had three special guests there also. The first two were Pat Dillon and Mike Curto, who are the announcers for the Everett Aquasox (the Mariners' short-A team) and the Tacoma Rainiers (the Mariners' AAA team). So people got to ask lots of questions about the minor leagues and whatnot, and that was pretty educational, just hearing about some prospects, and how things go in the minor leagues, and some stories like about when Randy Johnson was rehabbing, or what a wacky kid Chris Snelling is, or how Gil Meche was, or how every guy in Tacoma thought Pat Borders's wife is hot, or whatnot. I should try to go to more minor league games next year, maybe.
The third guest was Josh Boyd, who is a baseball scout for the Padres, but who lives and works in the Seattle area. So people asked him lots of questions about scouting. Josh asked him, "What is the difference between command and control?" and everyone in the room was like "oooh, smart question". Heh. I kinda started zoning out in the scouting part though.
So, I guess all the speakers ended around quarter of four, at which time it just turned into a "either go home or try to talk more" thing. I talked to one guy who had lived in Pittsburgh for a while too, and then to another guy who actually recognized me from the site because of my Kendall shirt. And I talked to Dave and Derek and Jason all a little. Dave had a group of people for a while talking about blogs, and there was a girl named Moira in the group who said she named her first-born son Brendan Ichiro, but she's not asian so it's kind of funny :) She wants to start a Mariners blog next year and everyone was telling her "You're a chick and you're cute, therefore EVERYONE will read your site" or something. Derek was sitting around talking about the obnoxious people who keep spamming the USSM site. And Dave looked at me like "Were you here last year?" and I was like "No..." He's like "You sure we haven't met before?" And I was like "No, but you DO look familiar, y'know?" Which is true. And for the record, Dave and Derek and Jason are all really good-looking. I mean, incredibly so. But two of them are married and the third is studying to be a minister, so it's a moot point. But still. Man, why aren't any of the really hot baseball nerds ever *single*?
On our way out we took a bunch of 2-liters since Dave vastly misestimated the soda capacity of the crowd. I also got some free issues of the "Grand Salami" magazine which is sold outside Safeco during the year -- the guy who makes them brought several boxes of free issues to the meet.
Jeff and I drove back here. In the car, I told him how I want to go to Japan and write a book about seeing baseball games over there. He had a lot of good ideas for how to accomplish such a thing. I should look into it. I wonder how people get book contracts to write stuff like that. I should talk to the guys who wrote this book, I suppose.
After the feed, Jeff and I hung out here chatting for a bit, and then I kind of zonked out for a while because I have a sore throat and was feeling like crap. I decided to go out for a bit to stop bycrankyuser's surprise birthday party, which was at a climbing place in Ballard. I was kinda psyched about it originally, but I realized there was no way in hell I'd be able to actually do rock climbing because I was feeling yucky.
But, dude. So I went for a little while... I met Khoo, and saw Laura and Erik, and Cuban, and people I don't know. I gave Brian back his copy of Diceland which he had left at my OLD house in January. And he gave me the best Christmas present EVER -- two "Ye Win!" t-shirts from Puzzle Pirates. Apparently Cleaver had donated some to a charity event or something? and so Brian got them for me. I don't think he realizes how totally rare the shirts are. So, I WIN. And I feel so awful for being so lame and sick last night. Because Brian rocks my socks.
And when I got home I looked in my mailbox and I had a card from my mom, and I also had a card from the Mariners, which basically is a picture of a snowy Safeco field with Ichiro in front of it batting with a baseball bat that looks like a huge candy cane. Hee.
I played a little PP and zonked out. All I can really say is that C totally knocks me out with how smart he is sometimes. He figured out who three of my unknown alts are. It made me direly happy for some reason, as if I'd left a puzzle for someone to solve and he was smart enough to solve it. I'll probly be deleting the alts anyway as foraging is dead, but still. Man, I just love smart people.
I didn't update last night because I just kinda fell asleep. I woke up today at like 1:30pm, andzqfmbg pretty much showed up on my doorstep shortly after, having driven from California to Portland last night and from Portland to here this morning. We hung out talking for a while, and after I did some waking up, we went to Fremont to hang out for a bit. I took him to Blue C Sushi since I hadn't been there in a few weeks, and we had lots of sushi and it was good :) Then we walked around Fremont, but the market was closing down. I did show him the rocket and the Center of the Universe and the troll though. Came back here, played some Pop'n'Music 10.
Then he left to go pick uplauraisback from work and to go hang out with her for a few hours. He actually left his car here and I'm letting him drive my car, so I hope he comes back here in one piece :) I stole his PNM controller and PNM 10 for the time being to make sure he actually does come back. Or something. I wish I knew more of the PNM10 songs, honestly, though the new Sana stuff is cool, and yes, so is the Goonies theme. So, yeah, I-Gene will get back here in a few hours, and probly crash on my couch and then head up to Canada tomorrow morning, I believe.
I'm going to drink more orange juice and answer some email and putter around here for the rest of the evening. I wish this dumb sore throat would go away.
Okay, so I stayed up too late Friday night, and
damienroc showed up here around 9 or 10am. I went back to sleep for another hour, then got up and we went out to Redmond for the U.S.S. Mariner pizza feed, which was a 5-hour gathering of baseball geeks who read the USSM.I was pretty scared at first heading in; we got feed surveys, and picked up some pizza and soda, and then as I was walking along past a table, I saw Josh (Buergel) there, so it was like, yay, I know someone else here too! (If I'd thought about it, I would have asked Josh on Thursday whether he was going, but I forgot) So Jeff and I sat down with Josh, who was at a table of completely random people, none of whom I ever caught the names of. I guess we had some intra-table chatting a little, but not much. Some lady did come by and comment on my Kendall shirt, like "Nice shirt. I have one too!" We ate pizza and filled out the surveys.
Around 1pmmish, Derek and Dave and Jason (the guys who run the site) got up, talked a little, and then fielded Mariners-related and USSM-related questions for an hour or so. It was very amusing. They talked a lot about specific players, signings, lineups, some stuff that had come up on the site, etc, lots of funny stuff. They spent a lot of time of course talking about Beltre and Sexson, and then a lot of time explaining exactly why they love and hate Randy Winn and expect him to be traded, and so on. Jason nodded towards me when someone asked about the Kendall trade, but I had been looking for my soda cup so I didn't actually hear what he said before it, oops. I finally got up the courage to ask a question towards the end, which was, namely, "Hey, so like, you guys totally ignored Texas the whole time you've been talking about the AL West -- do you think they just overperformed this year, or what?" To which Derek was like "Well, you know, if their entire team was their infield, I'd totally think they were great! But, uh, no."
They had three special guests there also. The first two were Pat Dillon and Mike Curto, who are the announcers for the Everett Aquasox (the Mariners' short-A team) and the Tacoma Rainiers (the Mariners' AAA team). So people got to ask lots of questions about the minor leagues and whatnot, and that was pretty educational, just hearing about some prospects, and how things go in the minor leagues, and some stories like about when Randy Johnson was rehabbing, or what a wacky kid Chris Snelling is, or how Gil Meche was, or how every guy in Tacoma thought Pat Borders's wife is hot, or whatnot. I should try to go to more minor league games next year, maybe.
The third guest was Josh Boyd, who is a baseball scout for the Padres, but who lives and works in the Seattle area. So people asked him lots of questions about scouting. Josh asked him, "What is the difference between command and control?" and everyone in the room was like "oooh, smart question". Heh. I kinda started zoning out in the scouting part though.
So, I guess all the speakers ended around quarter of four, at which time it just turned into a "either go home or try to talk more" thing. I talked to one guy who had lived in Pittsburgh for a while too, and then to another guy who actually recognized me from the site because of my Kendall shirt. And I talked to Dave and Derek and Jason all a little. Dave had a group of people for a while talking about blogs, and there was a girl named Moira in the group who said she named her first-born son Brendan Ichiro, but she's not asian so it's kind of funny :) She wants to start a Mariners blog next year and everyone was telling her "You're a chick and you're cute, therefore EVERYONE will read your site" or something. Derek was sitting around talking about the obnoxious people who keep spamming the USSM site. And Dave looked at me like "Were you here last year?" and I was like "No..." He's like "You sure we haven't met before?" And I was like "No, but you DO look familiar, y'know?" Which is true. And for the record, Dave and Derek and Jason are all really good-looking. I mean, incredibly so. But two of them are married and the third is studying to be a minister, so it's a moot point. But still. Man, why aren't any of the really hot baseball nerds ever *single*?
On our way out we took a bunch of 2-liters since Dave vastly misestimated the soda capacity of the crowd. I also got some free issues of the "Grand Salami" magazine which is sold outside Safeco during the year -- the guy who makes them brought several boxes of free issues to the meet.
Jeff and I drove back here. In the car, I told him how I want to go to Japan and write a book about seeing baseball games over there. He had a lot of good ideas for how to accomplish such a thing. I should look into it. I wonder how people get book contracts to write stuff like that. I should talk to the guys who wrote this book, I suppose.
After the feed, Jeff and I hung out here chatting for a bit, and then I kind of zonked out for a while because I have a sore throat and was feeling like crap. I decided to go out for a bit to stop by
crankyuser's surprise birthday party, which was at a climbing place in Ballard. I was kinda psyched about it originally, but I realized there was no way in hell I'd be able to actually do rock climbing because I was feeling yucky.But, dude. So I went for a little while... I met Khoo, and saw Laura and Erik, and Cuban, and people I don't know. I gave Brian back his copy of Diceland which he had left at my OLD house in January. And he gave me the best Christmas present EVER -- two "Ye Win!" t-shirts from Puzzle Pirates. Apparently Cleaver had donated some to a charity event or something? and so Brian got them for me. I don't think he realizes how totally rare the shirts are. So, I WIN. And I feel so awful for being so lame and sick last night. Because Brian rocks my socks.
And when I got home I looked in my mailbox and I had a card from my mom, and I also had a card from the Mariners, which basically is a picture of a snowy Safeco field with Ichiro in front of it batting with a baseball bat that looks like a huge candy cane. Hee.
I played a little PP and zonked out. All I can really say is that C totally knocks me out with how smart he is sometimes. He figured out who three of my unknown alts are. It made me direly happy for some reason, as if I'd left a puzzle for someone to solve and he was smart enough to solve it. I'll probly be deleting the alts anyway as foraging is dead, but still. Man, I just love smart people.
I didn't update last night because I just kinda fell asleep. I woke up today at like 1:30pm, and
zqfmbg pretty much showed up on my doorstep shortly after, having driven from California to Portland last night and from Portland to here this morning. We hung out talking for a while, and after I did some waking up, we went to Fremont to hang out for a bit. I took him to Blue C Sushi since I hadn't been there in a few weeks, and we had lots of sushi and it was good :) Then we walked around Fremont, but the market was closing down. I did show him the rocket and the Center of the Universe and the troll though. Came back here, played some Pop'n'Music 10.Then he left to go pick up
lauraisback from work and to go hang out with her for a few hours. He actually left his car here and I'm letting him drive my car, so I hope he comes back here in one piece :) I stole his PNM controller and PNM 10 for the time being to make sure he actually does come back. Or something. I wish I knew more of the PNM10 songs, honestly, though the new Sana stuff is cool, and yes, so is the Goonies theme. So, yeah, I-Gene will get back here in a few hours, and probly crash on my couch and then head up to Canada tomorrow morning, I believe.I'm going to drink more orange juice and answer some email and putter around here for the rest of the evening. I wish this dumb sore throat would go away.