Irene's Weblog

Good times were had on the NES.

Play it here.

Well, I’ve been calling it ShitiField ever since the name was announced. ESPN announcer, Anish Shroff, made the mistake of saying what we all think live on air.

Last Thursday, I went to the dentist to have a little work done that I’ve been putting off for quite a while. Well, when Dr. Beck was finished, he gave me two tickets to Saturday’s Rockies game versus the LA Dodgers. I thought that was a sweet deal for letting someone poke around in your mouth with sharp utensils. Naturally, I said yes, I’d love the tickets.

Now, being me, I always have to over do it. The game was going to be played at 6:10pm, which meant that it would be over by 10pm. No problem. I can drive to Denver and back in a single game for that. However, I had to insist on doing a bunch of other crap too, just to cram as much as I could into one day. Yes, I’m a glutton for punishment and an idiot.

So, Saturday morning, I got up at 4am. I had no choice as the cats attack you if you don’t feed them on time every day and I’m not cruel enough to kick them and go back to sleep. I dragged myself out of bed and fed the kitties and got ready to go.

Paul and I left just after 7am and stopped off at McDonald’s for some greasy breakfast. I was going to get some, but my stomach was bothering me a bit and anything greasy would not be good for a three hour car ride. I just got an iced tea and that was good enough.

We had no problems getting to the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. The directions on the website were perfect and easy to follow. No, I don’t have a GPS and have no need for one, because I read a map and follow directions. I don’t need a machine shouting at me and telling me what I need to do.

First up on our visit was to see Body Worlds. It was in Dublin last summer when we were there and Paul said he would have liked to have seen it. Now that it’s doing a stint in Denver, we thought we’d check it out. Although I don’t think it’s worth all the hype, it was kind of cool.

I got to see a severely messed up lung due to smoking, which was gross in and of itself, but what was absolutely disgusting was the leg with all the nicotine, cancer, etc. in it. When I saw it, I stepped back and muttered, “Fucking hell.” Fortunately, no one was around me so I was the only person that heard it.

The other really cool thing was a head. They use some sort of a liquid plaster that they inject into the veins and capillaries.  When it hardens, you get the exact replica of where all the veins and capillaries go. It was easy to see why you bleed so much when you get a cut on your head.

For the bodies, they use a technique called plastination.

Plastination is the process of extracting all bodily fluids and soluble fat from specimens, replacing them through vacuum-forced impregnation with reactive resins and elastomers, and then curing them with light, heat or certain gases, which give the specimens rigidity and permanence.

After Body Worlds, we walked around the museum. It’s kind of a letdown when you’ve been to the American Museum of Natural History a few dozen times, the British Museum, etc. Still, it’s not a bad little museum for the area and there are some cool things that are specific to the museum. I particularly liked the aquamarine crystals in the gem room.

Next, we headed into the IMAX theater to see the show about the Hubble Telescope. I wanted to see the show on Arabia too, but Paul wasn’t too bothered, so we didn’t go to that. It was a neat show, though I knew a lot of the information already. Paul is a big astronomy buff and could have been an astronomer, so I get to hear all the things that go on before most people. It’s still a great show and I’d recommend it to anyone with even a casual interest in astronomy or NASA.

After this, we left the museum and headed downtown to Coors Field. We were definitely early, so we decided to park the car for the rest of the day (it was only 3pm) and grab a very late lunch. The one thing I hate about downtown Denver is that things aren’t signed very well and it’s a little difficult to get around if you’re not used to the area. Usually, we stay in the Hyatt downtown and just walk or ride the bus to get where we want. Eventually, we settled on a parking garage two blocks from the stadium and left the car behind. We ate lunch at Fadó, an Irish pub that I’ve wanted to try for several years. I can attest that their iced tea and fish and chips are excellent. Their coleslaw is vomit worthy, however Paul ate mine and didn’t puke, so it might just be me. Paul can also verify that their Guinness is quite good.

Next we headed into the stadium and watched the Dodgers warm up and have batting practice. I took a few pictures, mostly of Manny because I don’t really follow the Western Divisions in baseball. The games usually start or get over when I’m going to bed, so I miss a lot of what’s going on out on the West Coast.

The game itself was pretty good and the Rockies won 11-3. It was also good that we ate before the game because a bag of roasted cashews were $9, cotton candy was $3.50, and a bottle of Coke was $4. We thought about eating other things in the stadium but kept saying, “Are you kidding me,” and “Holy shit!” when we saw how much things cost. One of these days, I’m going to eat something at a ballpark.

The picture below is of a guy who ate three footlong hotdogs in about 30 minutes. At the top of the inning, he got one and ate it. At the middle of the inning, he went back and got another one. At the end of the inning, he went and got a third one.

We also had our usual “diverse” people at the stadium. There was the breastfeeding lady that sat next to me. Her husband felt that his ipad and iphone were more important than the game. They left after the fifth inning. A couple with their two small boys came at the top of the 6th and left at the top of the 7th. The mother took three photos of Manny with her 35mm camera with a gigantor lens. The ginger family kept getting up and leaving. They left for three innings and I was very tempted to report their bag as suspicious. The lady next to Paul got up four times in two innings to get a cup of beer.

All in all, it was a great game and I was happy for the opportunity to see someone other than the Mets play. The last two years, the Mets have played Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday during the school year, so I haven’t been able to see them. Maybe they’ll play a weekend in 2011. We’ll see. Still, I was familiar enough with the majority of Rockies players that I rarely had to look at the screen to see who was up at bat.

Driving home, I had an incident with a cop I wanted to punch in the face. I wrote about it yesterday. He was a dick and I’m still bitter about it.

The drive home was rather uneventful other than I was extremely tired. I had a hard time staying awake and I was getting crabby. I was highly ticked when the gas station didn’t have my gas. It’s my favorite place to get gas just outside of Cheyenne. They only had 87 and 89 octane gas and my car runs best on anything in the 90s. I used to get 93 or 95, but those places are harder and harder to find. I’m stuck with 91 at home and that usually does well. Normally, I wouldn’t have been so irate, but it was nearing midnight and I just wanted to go home.

I filled the tank, calculated our car got 38mpg on the last tank of gas and headed home. Normally, the stretch from Kimball to Scottsbluff is lit just enough by the moon that it’s not that bad of a drive. Tonight, however, there was a storm approaching and it was pitch black. I could barely see anything, even with my high beams on. It sucked.

Fortunately, we didn’t die, despite me being tired as hell and we walked in the door just before 1:30am. I had been up for 21.5 hours and just wanted to sleep. I had a quick drink and went to bed. The cats, of course, woke me up just after 4am, insisting on being fed. Typical.

Sad news today as I read that Jane Jarvis has died. She had a long-spanning career, which included a stint as NY Mets pianist and was a great jazz musician.

Ms. Jarvis’s career was bracketed by jazz, which she considered her first love: she formed a jazz band in her native Indiana as a teenager, and she worked steadily as a jazz pianist, mostly in New York, from her mid-60s into her 90s. But for more than two decades she was best known as a ballpark organist.

After eight years playing for the Braves at County Stadium in Milwaukee, she was a fixture at Shea Stadium from 1964 to 1979, performing a repertory that mixed jazz staples like Charlie Parker’s “Scrapple From the Apple” with more conventional fare like “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” and “Meet the Mets.”

“I wasn’t a sports fan, and I was uncertain about doing it,” she told The New York Times in 1984. “But money overcame my worries.” By the time she began her long tenure with the Mets, 10 years later, she had become a knowledgeable and enthusiastic baseball devotee.

Few Mets fans knew that Ms. Jarvis had begun her career as a jazz pianist. Even fewer knew that she had a day job with the Muzak Corporation.

After leaving Muzak and the Mets, Ms. Jarvis spent her time as a jazz musician, recording her first solo album in 1985 when she was 70 years old.

Despite health problems, Ms. Jarvis continued to perform and record into the 21st century, both as a bandleader and with the Statesmen of Jazz, an ensemble consisting mostly of musicians over 65. She was the only woman in the group.

“I figure I’ve got another 25 years,” she told The Indianapolis Star in 1999. “At least I’ve got 25 years booked out.”

R.I.P. Ms. Jarvis, you were one hell of a lady.