I Confess...A Catholic girl's guide to life: Day 7: Take Me Out To The Ballgame!

I had eagerly been awaiting today. Tuesday. The day that Tom and Judy would venture into the city to meet up with Judy's childhood friend Ericha, and her husband, Mark. Not only was I super excited to see an old friend from back home, but this would be the first time Tom had met one of my friends from Klamath. Of course, he's met most of my Eugene friends, though not all. But, my friends from back home are different. There's a real history there that goes way, way back and it's important that he pass their tests! :o) Mark and Ericha hooked us up with tickets and did all the leg work for the evening's festivities. It was really nice to have someone else leading the charge! So, Tom and I had made arrangements for me to take the metro down a bit earlier so that I could meet up with Ericha and we could have some girl/gossip time before the guys got there. This was no problem since I had done the trial run to the ballpark the previous day. I arrived at the stadium around 4:30 and texted Ericha. She told me the restaurant to go to and to try to get a booth in the bar. I'm thinking...try? Would it really be this packed already? The game isn't even until 7! However, by the time I walked the few blocks to the restaurant it was indeed too late. The booths in the bar were all taken and, of course, I had forgotten about that bloody Fifa World Cup. Naturally, everyone was in there to watch the game. By "the game," I mean the Germany vs. Brazil game in which Germany absolutely dominated Brazil. One would think that a 5 nothing lead at the half would clear some people out, but I guess they were holding on to hope that Brazil would make a comeback? Please. It's hard enough to make a comeback when the score is 1-0. Don't get me started on this sport. Just don't do it. Anyway, there were all these other rules about seating in the actual restaurant section, so we decided to go next door to Nando's: a Portuguese chicken place. This turned out to be a pretty good move. We were able to be seated quickly and we got our food relatively quickly, as well. Tom and Mark met up with us here and we all had a lovely meal together.

After we ate, it was time to get started towards the game. Mark and Ericha grabbed their bikes (their car was stolen at some point last year, and they decided not to replace it...and they'll soon be moving back to the West coast ;o) and we headed up the road towards the stadium. We took obligatory tourist pictures out front, scanned our tickets and headed in. Up to this point, both Mark and Ericha had expressed fears about it raining that night. They had apparently been checking the weather all day and the chances of rain continued to increase as the day wore on. I hadn't even thought about checking the weather because my phone said it was partly cloudy and 96 degrees outside. What could go wrong? Well, a lot, as it turns out.

Inside the gates.

Look, Roo! Not only did you make it onto the blog, but you got a picture too!!

Just as we enter the stadium, I see a big banner sign that says, "Attention Fans: Delayed game start time, severe weather warning in effect." Mark instantly began checking his phone. Sure enough, a severe weather storm had been issued. So, we decided to drink some beer. We got our five dollar Coors lights and headed to find our seats. I could tell Mark and Ericha were way more anxious about the rain than I was. I guess I was still in disbelief that it would actually rain. I reassured them by saying it would just make for a better story, and Mark was in disbelief that this was my attitude! We ended up walking the entire perimeter of the concourse in trying to get to our seats. However, once we got to our seats....WOW! They were awesome. We were seated just about dead center field three or four rows up from the wall. It was pretty good home run territory if you ask me! I was so stoked!

We sat down and literally at that moment an announcement on the loud speaker came on: "Attention fans, please clear the stadium and head toward the main concourse." I looked around the stadium and you could see a mass exodus of people up the aisles toward where we had just come from. We sat in our seats for literally 2 seconds. The security guy came and swept everyone out of their seats as we headed for the coverage of the concourse. Luckily, as we were standing around wondering what on earth we were going to do, Ericha eyed some free table space and totally swooped in on this elderly gentleman and his son. They were quite kind to let us take up three-fourths of their table. We sat and visited and waited for it to rain.

That is apparently Tom's "sad" face. I'd say more disgruntled than anything!

We may have been sitting there close to an hour when finally the rain began. And, it rained. Like, really rained. We heard the thunder, and we saw the lightning. It seemed relentless. We had no idea when they were going to actually make the decision to postpone the game so Mark busted out his phone that had a really cool game called Heads Up. We played this game for probably another hour. It is summer fun. I recommend it to anyone who might be see themselves getting stuck somewhere with a group of friends. It really helped us to pass the time. I think it helped pass the time for those that were around us, also. People all around us were watching and laughing right along with us. At one point, a guy that was standing nearby asked us what the app was called because he wanted to download it so he and his friends could pass the time playing it, too. That was pretty cool. During the game, Tom whispered to me, "This is probably just as fun as watching the game!" Certainly, it was more interactive than watching a baseball game.

See the guy looking on in amusement? Yeah, he's jealous.

At this point, we've probably been sitting for a couple of hours. I began to get a little stir crazy and got up to take some pictures. I just couldn't believe that it was STILL raining...and raining hard. When were they going to call it? We sat back down and waited some more. Finally, it was nearing 10 pm and Tom was getting antsy to get home due to having to get up early the next day. We deliberated about what to do. I didn't want them to start the game up after we had left because then we really wouldn't get our money back. But, I also didn't want to wait much longer as we were all getting tired. As we were hemming and hawing, the announcement came over the loud speaker that the game was to be postponed until a later date. As relieved as I was to hear this announcement, I was also very saddened because I knew I would not be here for the postponed game time. So, regardless, I didn't get my monies worth ;o(.