14-10 in the 8th - nuff said

Sorry - haven't blogged a lot this week. It's been an up and down week. Did some Riverside running Monday evening which was really nice - the breeze from the water helped cut the humid hot weather (yay heat waves). Then N and I went to the super-healthy pizza place on the way home.

Tuesday was very exciting - the title really says it all :-).
So I played softball again, and I have to say I love this game! Missed you again Christine. So I was under the impression our team (the Bytecodes) sucked. Really. There's only 4 teams in the league and I heard it's very rare for us to win. So I'm just out there for fun anyway. I play 2nd base. It was a beautiful evening, even if a bit humid. We had a great team - another woman besides me so we didn't have any penalties! (If you have only 1 woman for example you start with 1 out every other inning). We had great team spirit. Mike Hind - my now 2nd line boss was there - backing me up at short-stop. So we started off at bat - I think at the end of the first it was 1-2. Nice that we score a lot more than pro baseball :-). Then by the end of the 4th we were up 8-6! I felt really good - we weren't making errors, I was pretty good at bat - got walked the first time, then got mostly base hits. Once I hit it at the pitcher's head and unfortunately got out. Another time I did a line drive at the 3rd baseman, and my whole team thought I'd make it, but the 3rd guy bee-lined it to the 1st base guy and just beat me - bummer. But overall I did well. Mike was awesome at short - catching tons of fly balls - one inning he got all 3 outs back to back with 3 pop up catches. So yeah - just exciting game. And the other team had some great players and hitters (I think one guy got at least 2 home runs). These games are only supposed to go 7 innings. So we had shut each other down 3 innings and we were still up 8-6 at the bottom of the 7th and they were up to bat . We just had to hold them off - go Bytecodes! Unfortunately 2 people got through before we shut them down, so it was tied at the end of the 7th 8-8. Although we usually don't play more innings, we went to the 8th! So exciting. My adrenaline was just pumping - we had a chance to win! So top of the 8th - we are up to bat. 3 guys bat before me and all get on base. I bat - accidentally bunt and get on base too. So we score with no outs, and have bases loaded! It's looking good. For some reason they keep making errors or we keep hitting well, because we just sailed through our roster and started over - scoring 6 runs that inning before they finally got 3 outs! We were so pumped - we did awesome :-). Such teamwork. I was excited to be the 3rd base coach and wave people in. Wow. So ok - we go to the field - just gotta stop them from overly scoring themselves. And we did! We let a couple of peopel score - the really good hitter, then the fast runner. But we caught some fly balls and struck a girl out and we suddenly won in the 8th 14-10!! I was so happy and flushed and felt like it was such a great game. I scored 2 of our runs overall and definitely got at least 1 out. Really energized me - working together, and really being into the spirit of the game, playing well. Go team! I loved it. :-).

So life was really good at the end of Tuesday - got a lot of exercise; got a ride home from a really weird guy who told me his life story within 15 minute of meeting me (and lots of personal, "what's really going on" stuff) - but he was really nice and a Manhattanite that'll tell me when he hears of things going on in the city; got home and Naveen had put together my bike for me and had dinner waiting - yum Chinese. Very good stuff.

Wednesday we were supposed to go to a free concert in Central Park of the NY Philharmonic in the evening - with fireworks to follow! I was excited, but unfortunately it got canceled because of rain. Bummer. So we went out to Indian food instead - yum. Oh yeah - and I went out to Dim Sum for lunch with my group - also tasty. Although I didn't know what I was doing, it seemed they either didn't come around very often, or the guy who was ordered for us cut it short because it didn't seem like a lot of food to me. But tasty :-).

That's most of my week. Tonight we are going to clean and get ready for our first visitor - Erica - who flies in tomorrow. I'm really excited! And I'll blog soon about all the other stuff going on with me - figuring out how to balance everything, figuring out my research goals, and figuring out time management. Life is always crazy, but I think I'm doing better - I have plans that might make life more sane (notice I'm doing fewer things during the week). So yeah - I think I'll make it. And it's almost a weekend so I can soon catch up on sleep! Have a good one...