Baseball, the amazing way

The Diamond Club is a section of seats - about 20 rows - just behind home plate. They are connected to a lovely restaurant and bar under the stands. You even enter the stadium through a special door. Everything - all food and drink and service - is included in the price of your ticket. The seats themselves are really padded and comfy. You can order food and drink right from your seat during the game.

We got there two hours before the game and had a lovely dinner before we even went out to the field. The food is buffet style. It was good. Not fabulous but good. I think I enjoyed more of it than Frank did but even he, I think, was impressed with the variety available. In addition to an impressive buffet that included fried chicken and barbecue beef and pork and salads and potatoes. But then there was a whole other section of pizza, hot dogs, sausages and candy of all kinds and ice cream and chips and pop corn and a fridge of pop and water. All of it paid for. You just grab what you want. It was kind of amazing. And no lines.

Well, about the 5th inning, I got up to go pee and there was a line. I abandoned and went back in the 7th inning and no line at all. The bathroom, by the way, was lovely.
And hand hand lotion!

All of that was impressive and lovely but the piece d' resistance was our actual seat location. There are three sections of about 20 rows each. So you can pay an arm and a leg for these seats and still not be that close but the seats that Frank got were nearly on the field! 4 rows back. FOUR. You know those 15-20 people in the stands, that you see behind the batter? ONE OF THEM WAS ME! I just checked my TiVo of the game and I found me.



It was freakily close. Seeing the players I see every night in the flesh. I mean they were so close, that if everyone had shut up, we could have had a conversation. It was so amazing. So amazing. And, as most everyone we ran into warned, I am no totally ruined for any other seat in the stadium. I tried to feel sorry for those people far far away (like 30 rows behind us) who were sitting on hard wood seats, but I was too busy wallowing in the moment.

The game sucked but it did not matter one single bit. The evening was glorious. Just amazing in every way. And is locked in my special memories section of my brain.

This morning I'm listening/watching the Google I/O keynote. So far all the amazing new things for Google Photos have zero value to me and the one thing I want - the ability to easily and surely include the photos I have stored there in my livejournal entries - not even mentioned. Ok, Flickr, you're still on duty.

I did sign up for Android O beta.

It's still going on but so far, it's not costing me much at all. Whew.

I did get a bit of a $$ scare this morning. I got an email from Amazon saying that if they did not receive the $500 chromebook I returned by June, they would be retracting the $500 credit they sent me. I no longer had the tracking number anywhere, since I sent that sucker back in March. So I called Amazon and without ANY waiting, I got a really nice young woman who listened and fixed. And sent me an email confirmation. Whew.

I haven't even gotten to sewing today. I was going to but after swimming, I went in to make up the bed and fell into it for a nap. But, I'm awake now and it's time for lunch!

My tweets

• Tue, 14:33: The hen house now has an egg box. The chicks are getting excited for the big reveal. @ The… https://t.co/vemhfO121Z
• Tue, 18:40: Hmmmm @ Mariners Diamond Club https://t.co/uoPWoud90a
• Tue, 18:44: I told them no video. If they want a statement to see me after the game. @ Mariners Diamond Club https://t.co/g6Jtw5XOYL
• Tue, 19:09: If our seats were any closer we would need to be in uniform @ Mariners Diamond Club https://t.co/IzW3viCGsH
• Tue, 21:07: I'm a VIP and I have the wrist band to prove it. @ Mariners Diamond Club https://t.co/ORFKqow5Qr

Continue

It was late September 1987 when I went to Rochester, MN to interview for this 'perfect opportunity.' I'd never been to Minnesota before and knew very little about IBM Rochester or even Rochester. I knew it was home to the Mayo Clinic and that was hammered home on the plane ride out there.

Today, Rochester has a population of about 120,000 but back then it was half that. Way smaller than the New York Metropolitan area I was coming from. So it was a little surprising to discover that 1. there were so many flights to there and that they were all so full on a Sunday night. When I got to the waiting lounge for the flight I began noticing some peculiarities...

Many of the passengers had large brown envelopes - like really large but all the same. But, they didn't seem to be in any group or anything. And then I noticed some other stuff. One guy had no nose. A woman sitting next to me had bandages peaking out from her dress neckline. There were other people with other obvious physical issues.

One of the first Rochester lessons I learned was that Monday morning was diagnosis and testing day at the Mayo Clinic. People flew in from around the world in flocks on Sundays. All those brown envelopes were x-rays and scans. Patients and their spouses, partners or friends came in for a week, generally. Mondays were books solid. Tuesdays were 'off' days while the docs scratched their heads over the tests. Wednesday-Friday were result/treatment/going home days depending.

The town itself had way more movie theaters, cheap food chains and craft shops than you would expect for its size. That's because on Tuesdays, all those people (more than 100,000 a year in those days) had nothing to do on and so they'd go buy yarn or craft kits, or go to the movies or just wander around. Tuesdays were a trip. If you forgot what day it was, all you had to do was drive through town and you'd remember fast. Friday and Saturdays, it turned into a small town again.

The everyday population was pretty much divided in terms of work. You'd meet somebody knew - like a hairdresser or waiter and the first question they would ask would be IBM or The Clinic? Meaning where do you or the person who supports you work? I never actually met anyone with both - like one spouse worked one place and the other worked the other. There must have been some but everyone I knew was one or the other.

But, I digressed there... My interview was on Monday morning. I got there early afternoon on Sunday and drove around to find the plant and get a lay of the land. At the road where you turned into the plant was a giant Target store. YES!! Targets were new and not on the east coast. I had been in one while visiting a friend in Tucson and fell in love with it. Score. Oh and there was a Hardee's too. I loved Hardee's and there were not many locations outside of the east coast.

The town seemed doable. I was excited.

To Be Continued