Update

Some of you may recall a certain sloshball incident... Well it's been just over three years since that fateful day, and here's what my leg looks like now:

Significantly improved, but still significantly scarred.

It's Wednesday

I just got back from a quick work trip to Chicago this afternoon.  A few of the other people in my group and my boss were going to give a couple presentations to another division at work and at the last minute last week my boss said I was welcome to come if I wanted.  Essentially my lab at Big Fancy University (BFU) has been taking longer to get going than anticipated, so I've found myself scrounging for things to do to keep busy (due to things out of my control, like construction not really being done when they say it is and instruments taking forever to ship and then nobody actually telling me that they've shipped/arrived).  I'm actually going back to Chicago again next week, though as much for my own training as to have something to do.

Last night in my hotel room I caught the end of Miracle on TV.  Seriously it's got to be the best sports movie ever.  It's about the US hockey team at the 1980 Olympics at Lake Placid, and unless you've been living under a rock, you know what happened.  You know the US beat the "unbeatable" Russian team and went on to win gold.  But the movie is SO GOOD.  It leaves you hanging on the edge of your seat in total anxious suspense and excitement even though you know they're going to win.  I grew up in a baseball household, I love baseball, and there are loads of great baseball movies (A League of Their Own and 61* are my two favorite baseball movies, but there are loads more really good ones!), but Miracle still takes the prize as the best sports movie ever in my book.

I've got one more resolution to add to last week's list - I'm going to use my cookbooks more.  The vast majority of my cookbooks have only 1-2 recipes that I've made (although some of those I make regularly and/or they're my go-to recipe for a certain thing), which is a shame.  I was lucky enough to receive a copy of Smitten Kitchen's new book for Christmas, and while the book is beautiful enough to own for the pictures alone, it seems ridiculous and kinda tragic (in a shallow, first-world problem sort of way of course) that it should join the pile of rarely used cookbooks.  I've added ingredients for plum & poppy seed muffins to my grocery list.  I'm still browsing possibilities for dinner this weekend... 

One Year Later

**Warning! Not for the squeemish!**




July 5th marks one whole year since I did this sliding into 3rd base playing sloshball:
For the record, I was sober. Also for the record, it wasn't worth sliding, but I can't help it.

The day after:

After the first trip to Student Health:
This is after they decided it was infected, but before I realized I'm allergic to sulfa antibiotics. It's a shame I didn't keep the photo I took of my leg after the reaction. That was gross.

My awesome roommates kept me stocked with whatever color Koban I wanted:
That $&!# is expensive! This is after the swelling from the injury and the allergic reaction went down. My right leg was like twice the size of my left...

One year later:
Yep, pretty sure that scar is here to stay. Despite the Tucson heat, I've worn knee high socks and pants every time I've played softball since then. Even so I've scraped my knees a few more times sliding. As my sister puts it, I apparently like the burn victim look.

Coors Field

Before ASMS actually began, I went to the Waters Users' Meeting - where they essentially make all their big announcements as far as new instrumentation, have some internal and external research presentations, and some discussion panels. At the end of the event, they took all the attendees to Coors Field, home of the Colorado Rockies. In addition to all the free food and booze, and cheesy sports games (yep, mass spectrometrists in batting cages), we could wander down to the field. We could walk the warning track behind the infield, hang out in both dugouts, and even check out the visitors clubhouse. It was pretty cool to say the least. :)

View from behind homeplate

Steps down to the field - the spacing of stadium steps is always so terrible! Too short for two strides, too long for one!

The purple row of seats is at 1 mile above sea level.

View from the visiting dugout bench

Bullpen phone

There were even super cheesy, sports-themed ads on the jumbo tron.

The visiting clubhouse - I've always been curious to see what the clubhouse really looks like...

How many hangers does a guy need??

They had away jerseys for all the NL teams, but clearly only this one matters.

I guess we already knew Major League baseball players were freaking babies, but holy cow look at all those toiletries that they provide for them!

Take 2

I ran yesterday's half marathon in 2:22. That's 10 minutes off last year's time. :) Things were going really well until about miles 9-10 or so - I was actually on pace for 2:15. But then my hips and back decided they'd had enough. At the end of the race I felt so much worse than last year, but shockingly enough, I'm entirely pain free today! Woohoo! Let's hope the soreness isn't yet to come...

She's done it again.

I'm thinking maybe I should make this a weekly feature. We'll see.

Me: My knee is all oozy again. :(

Little Sister: Why?

Me: I slid at softball last night.

Little Sister. Wow. You're dumb. Do you like the burn victim look?

I'm not sure why I seem to break skin every time I slide now - I never scraped myself like I have in grad school all the years I played softball growing up. And for the record, I was wearing long pants and knee-high socks this time. At least it's just my knee and not my whole shin.

P.S. They went ahead last night and called a snow day for today. Which is awesome (for her) because you don't have to rush to finish homework or get up early only to find out school's canceled. I really wish they did that while I still went to a school that had snow days. Anyways, the point of this tangent is that apparently they'll get extra credit in religion for making a snowman of a religious figure. All-girls, Catholic high schools are wonderfully weird.

Acid on Base, 2-6

We won again tonight! That's 2 wins in a row! Woohoo!

Best Bridesmaid Gift Ever and Other Noteworthy Items

As part of my bridesmaid gift, my college roommate gave me an apron. Not just any old apron, an apron with unit conversions printed on it! AND printed on it upside-down, so that when you're wearing it, they're in the right direction for you to read them! It's brilliant!


I got the chance to break in my B.A. new apron Tuesday night when E and I went on another baking spree making everything pumpkin for my labmate's 2nd year seminar. We still had a ton of frozen pureed pumpkin from the pumpkins we got in our CSA share last year, and we figure it's probably only a few weeks until we start getting pumpkin again... So it was time to use it up! We made pumpkin cupcakes with cream cheese frosting, pumpkin cookies with brown sugar glaze, and pumpkin cranberry bread. I was astounded that one batch of cupcakes (that supposedly makes 1 dozen normal-size cupcakes) made 100 mini cupcakes!


In other news, I'm still down all of my illness weight loss, and the blue dress fits so well that it zips up so easily I can zip it myself! Yay! 2 weeks until the wedding...

I registered for another half marathon last night. The same one I ran last March. And it looks like we've got 3 out of 4 runners needed to do the relay marathon in December... Any takers? It's only 7ish miles...

I'm pretty set on going to Amsterdam in early January now...time to buckle down and commit to a plane ticket. I emailed and heard back from my host family in Lyon, so I'll go see them too. I really miss them and think about them nearly every day, but I've been an absolutely wretched person and really haven't kept in touch at all, so I'm really quite grateful and lucky that they still seem to want to see me. Now to email my advisor to ask for an extra long Christmas break...

Yesterday it was 103 degrees in Tucson. On September 30th. Absolutely freakin ridiculous. The average high at the end of September is apparently about 90, but we broke the record high the past two days. Thank goodness I'm going to Flagstaff for the weekend with E & J - it's only going to be about 80 during the day and 40 degrees overnight! So excited! Also thank goodness it's supposed to cool off into the 80s next week!

Have a good weekend!

Acid on Base, 0-1

One of the post-docs in the department organized a softball team and signed us up for the city's fall league. While we had several practices before the season started last night, let's go ahead and admit that we're (mostly) chemists. Not athletes.

Honestly we really didn't do too terribly. We lost 18-12...supposedly. We definitely lost, that's not the question, but we could have sworn the other team at 16 runs going in to our last at-bat...but anyways. It's not like it would have changed the outcome. Aside from a really rough first inning where everybody was still getting their feet under them, we didn't have a bad game. If the other team hadn't batted around and then some in that first inning, it would have been a really close game. And we made (and almost made haha) some really great plays.

This is the first time I've played in a city, slow-pitch, rec league like this. So far I actually find it somewhat annoying in how complicated it is! The university rec league has some funny rules, but not nearly as many as the city league. In the campus league, as long as you have 3 women on the field, it doesn't matter what positions they play. In this league, the outfielders have to be 2 men/2 women, infielders also 2 men/2 women, and pitcher/catcher has to be one of each gender. And if the pitcher walks a man, it's 2 bases rather than 1! In theory the idea is to prevent people from walking men to get to the female batters. Aside from being sexist is just annoying. Nobody's deliberately walking anybody. They also use 11" balls when men bat and 10" balls when women bat. Yes, yes, the men are mostly stronger than the women, and I can hit the 10" ball farther than the 11" ball. But sheesh. It means you have to swap the ball after EVERY batter! It's ridiculous!

For such a high-strung league, the umpiring was certainly less than stellar. There were at least 2 blatantly terrible calls, and one point when the umpire told me (I was catching) the wrong number of outs before the play, leading to quite the confusion following the play. Hopefully that was a one-night thing and next week will have better officiating, and we'll play more mediocre-ly and less terribly. :)

Neat

The other day at the gym I was watching the USA v. Japan "world cup" softball game (yes, softball calls their international championship a "world cup" as well, and to make it lamer, they have one every year there isn't a summer olympics).

Like all other televised sports, the announcers were filling time with random tidbits about all the players, and they commented that one woman took last year off on maternity leave.

It struck me as odd at first, definitely not something you hear about very often. There aren't very many professional sports leagues/venues for female athletes, and most seem to "retire" before reaching child bearing age and situation. I've decided it's quite cool though, that there is at least one member of the US women's softball team with a child.

You wish you were as cool as I am.

This is what happens when you go to student health and they decide the gigantic scrape on your leg is infected. I'm seriously considering getting out my leg warmers to put one on my other leg.

Ouch

It hurts. It hurts a lot. It hurts so, so much more after the fact. It didn't really hurt much at all when I actually did it.


Monday afternoon we played sloshball to celebrate the 4th. Sliding is clearly not necessary in a recreational game of kickball with a keg at 2nd base. However after so many years of softball, sliding is really more of an instinctive reaction than a choice. Clearly, a poor instinct.