Aaron's Birthday: Part 1

As part of a clever ruse to cover up Aaron's birthday gift, which was taking us to a Dodgers-Giants game, my parents brought over our patio table. Which was part of our anniversary gift. We had gone shopping for the furniture a few weeks ago, and found chairs at Ikea, but no table. We looked everywhere. My dad is pretty good at handiwork, and the chairs are wood, so I asked if he would try making a table. It took a few weeks to construct and get the stain right, so they brought it over on Thursday afternoon. I was hoping it would throw Aaron off the trail, and it did. :) He was really confused about why they were there.

I had talked my dad into taking me and Aaron to the Dodgers-Giants game on Thursday to celebrate Aaron's birthday (which was Friday). I have known about this plan since June 16th... which is unheard of for me. It was fun to have something to tease him with for a bit. Eventually I found out what his guesses were, and he guessed it on the first try - but I covered it well. So he was still surprised and quite perplexed when my parents showed up here on Thursday evening. The pieces didn't really fit together until he opened his gift, which had the tickets inside, and even then not until he saw that they were tickets to the Giants game - when he realized we were going that night.

We headed out and made our traditional stop at Phillipe's. Home of the world's best beef dip sandwich. Their food really is good, and much less expensive than eating at the stadium. Plus they have quirky things like lemonade and iced tea for 55 cents, or you can just buy a hard-boiled egg by itself, the soda is in cans, etc. And they have awesome (and cheap) coffee. Aaron and I had coffee and lemon meringue pie for desert. :) In case you have no idea what I'm talking about with this whole "Phillipe's" business, take a look:


Then we made our way over to Chavez Ravine and waited with the masses in line to get our Russell Martin bobbleheads. Score! While we were in the car waiting to park, Aaron and I took a moment to think about what faces we would make if Barry Bonds hit his stupid homerun at our stadium. Aaron looked real scary, I just looked kinda confused and irritated. By the way, you can thank our new Samsung Sync camera phones for bringing you this picture-filled post. :)

I'm a very competitive person. So it really chaps my hide when the Dodgers don't step it up, especially on the rare occasions I get to go see them play. But I love those dramatic moments... bases loaded, great hitter comes up to bat (ie Nomar, Kent, Martin). It's just so awesome to have 50,000+ people on their feet, most of them cheering for the Dodgers... chanting, yelling, stomping. It's seriously why I love going to games. That and the garlic fries. ;) Even though we never pulled the game out of that downward spiral, we still got lots of hope-filled moments and loud cheers going. That's always fun. I took several videos with my phone, hoping to catch an awesome grand-slam moment, which, of course, didn't happen. Either way, the video is a glimpse of how awesome that sound is:

But there's a tragic downside to that. More often than not, especially with the Dodgers, apparently, you're going to be let down in those clutch moments. Runners in scoring position just wasted. This game was pretty pathetic when you look at the stats. I think when all was said and done, we had 13 hits and scored 2 runs. One of which was WALKED IN. Oh man. It's games like that that give my friends who are Angels fans room to talk crap about my boys in blue. And why Aaron always reminds me not to get my hopes up when it comes to the postseason. *sigh*

There was also a chance that Bonds might hit his 755th (fraudulent) homerun. And that redeemed the game a bit as well. Aaron was ready to throw the ball back if he caught it, in which case, my mom and I had a plan to tackle him because that would be worth some serious cash. Ha. Every time he was up to bat, we booed so loudly. It was awesome. And at one point pretty much the whole crowd started chanting "steroids", a la the tone which Aaron described to me they used to use to chant against Daryl Strawberry back in the day. I took a video with my cell phone, I was a little late on the draw - so this wasn't the booing when he came up, which was the loudest. It's just booing as he was swinging. And if you look accross the stadium you can see all of the flashes of those so-called haters trying to get a picture of that record-tying homerun. :PDon't get me wrong, I don't hate Barry Bonds - but it's just not right that someone who is so obviously using steroids is taking a record like that from someone who actually earned it and worked for it. Hopefully A-Rod will smash his record quickly.

We stayed until the bitter end. That end being a 4-2 loss. We stopped at McDonald's in Covina on the way home for some comfort food - aka $1 sundaes. At which point my dad realized that his wallet had fallen out of his back pocket at the stadium. :( We tried calling all kinds of phone numbers to see if we could get a live person on the phone to no avail. Sorry, Dad.

That was the kick-off of Aaron's birthday celebration. Part 2 to follow...