Baseball and jerk friends.

June 21, 2003

Longest day of the year, huh? Seems like the standard 24 hours to me. I don’t know what all the hubbub is about.

So here I am, back at home after a night and a day at my Dad’s. I packed up after dinner tonight and both my Dad and my stepmom seemed a bit surprised that I was leaving, but tomorrow IS their anniversary and so I thought I’d skedadle to be polite. Originally they were planning on going to the coast this weekend and I was supposed to be over there to feed the cats while they were gone, but the weather didn’t hold and with no required job to keep me over there and their anniversary upon me, I thought it was the polite thing to do at the very least. Sure, they begged for me to stay and enlighten them with my wit and wisdom, but I must spread my gifts to the world. It’s the terrible burden that I bear.

The baseball game was a lot of fun. I get a kick out of the fact that tickets are $10 for great seats, but food is so friggen’ expensive. A large beer (probably about a pint size) runs $6. Polish dogs are $4.50. With my appetite, I’m glad I ate some food before the game so that I could limit my intake and expenditures. The Beavers ended up winning the game, no thanks to the people in front of us. There was a family in the row directly in front of my sister, my Dad and myself, including a few kids, that was related to one of the team members of the opposite team. The boy was the most vocal, and he was about 10 or so, and my Dad and I had a lot of fun teasing him about the other team’s foul-ups, just as he enjoyed pointing out the Beavers’. I didn’t tell him that I’m not REALLY a Beavers fan, I was just there for the GAME and it wouldn’t really have mattered who was playing, but kids are so much fun to mess with that it was hard to resist. The kid’s cousin came up to plate once, and he popped out to let the Beavers win, but I’ll admit, he did get his bat on a pitch that ended up as a foul, but he got some serious distance on it. It was a fun game. We didn’t sit through the entire game last summer when I went for the last time, but we stayed through all nine innings this time around. I’m thinking I might go back on the 4th for bth the game and the fireworks display afterwards, but it’ll depend on what everyone else I know does. Maybe I’ll get a better offer.

My Dad and I finished the miniseries “Band of Brothers” today. He and I started it a few weekends ago, got six episodes in in two days, and then I came back and started them with my Mom, as well. The final verdict from my Dad: the “best movie/film/TV” he’s ever seen. My thoughts and words, almost exactly, that I expressed right here after I’d finished them a few months ago. NOw to finish them with my Mom….

That fight between myself and my friend that I told you about a few months ago has come back to haunt me. So you don’t have to go back and look, I got in a fight with a friend of mine–or rather, she got in a fight with me–over something that I and everyone else I’ve asked about saw as totally innocuous, but the resulting fight put a serious rift between myself and this person who I thought I was getting along with very well at the time. Anyhow, she refused to take back or even apologize for some of the things she said about me which was really prevented me from moving forward in my friendship with her. To make a long story short and glossing over some of the less interesting details, I have suddenly become a deceitful and dishonest person to her, again for something innocuous that can’t even be construed as a misunderstanding this time. I resent this a great deal. For someone to call me deceitful and dishonest when I’ve never told a lie to this person–nor even told a half-truth or a lie of ommision–really cuts deep. I resent my integrity being unjustly questioned (or in this case, destroyed). I mean, if I had done something wrong, I would have copped to it. For weeks now as we’ve been talking she lied to me about something and attempted to set me up to catch me in a lie about something else, and I think when it never happened she had to resort to namecalling. She resorted to namecalling the last time we verbally sparred, and to me, there’s nothing more immature and childish. I use namecalling with people when I’m mad on the road, or when I’m joking around with friends, or when I’m trying to accurately describe someone who I dislike, but certainly never to their face. To have to sink so low as to insult the other person means you’ve stopped listening to the and are just talking. One cannot settle an argument through insults. That she wouldn’t even listen to me means she had her mind made up before the conversation even started, and for that I’m truly sorry. I’m come to the conclusion that being friends with this person is like trying to do long division in your head: sometimes you get the easy ones, like 12 / 4, but when you get the hard ones like 2746290291 / 7727 and you get the answer wrong, you fail the class. What kind of sick and twisted teacher does that? In any case, I think I’m for the better without this person–or anyone for that matter–who has a problem with me and doesn’t attempt to solve it through rational means. I’m a person who’s pretty open to criticism on a lot of topics, steadfast on others, but at least I don’t compromise my maturity by acting like a preschooler. I guess I can be thankful for that. So normally I’d say that I was down a friend, but I haven’t really considered this person too much of a friend since we first fought. I guess I should say I’m clear about where I stand with this person. No big loss, at this moment in time. Come to think of it, I guess she was the one being dishonest and deceitful with me. Huh. How about that?

So other than baseball games with some heckling kids and online fights with a heckling “kid,” not much is going on at the moment. I went in to Blockbuster the other day to try and find a movie that came out on DVD about a month ago, but just try and find a limited release movie from the theater on DVD. Especially a futuristic martial arts one. I could go to Hollywood and look, but being on a budget and $3.75 movie rentals don’t go well together. I’ll wait. Speaking of waiting, I’ll have to do that with the new Harry Potter book. I’d imagine that it’s sold out at a lot of places, so I think maybe late next week I’ll swing by Borders and see if they have another shipment in by then. I can take those hoards of little kids. Easy.

Better watch out kids–I’m coming for my copy of Harry Potter and I won’t take “no” for an answer.