Monday, June 28, 2021

Fancy Cardinals Seats

I’ve been to a ton of Cardinals games, and even experienced several all-inclusive seating area tickets, but I don’t think I’d ever sat in the fancy green seats behind home plate. In the Champions Club you get a decent buffet and unlimited drinks but your seats are still pretty far away from the action. These seats you were so close to the players that I was afraid to criticize plays because I thought they might hear me.

Our buddies Joel and Wing got the hookup through his work and were kind enough to share. The experience started before the game in a fancy dining room area that even had a nice piano on hand. I was impressed that after all this time that there was an area of the ballpark that I hadn’t seen yet. I wonder if there are other cool areas that have still evaded my gaze? The fanciest part of it all I think was that you could order limitless drinks and ballpark style snacks and have them delivered to your seat. Very fancy. We abused this privilege as much as possible and ordered a ton of stuff.

Lydia applied to some teaching jobs in the Seattle area after the great time we had on our recent trip there, and as Lydia seems to always be able to do, she got an offer very quickly. Another sort of magical thing happened as well, where we intended to resign our lease at Grace Lofts in downtown St. Louis, but they were pretty inept about getting us the paperwork and so we hadn't signed anything by extreme luck. We made the huge decisions to move away from St. Louis, where Lydia was born and raised and where I've called home for a decade. I'm from Springfield, IL, and went to college 30 minutes west in Jacksonville, IL, so although I'm not a St. Louis native this was a pretty big decision for me as well. Joel and Wing were some of the first people that we shared the news with. Amusingly they seemed to be exploring a move as well, I want to say to Denver, and they had just bought a new house!


I've been sort of doomscrolling lately about the news of the unprecedented heat wave in the Pacific Northwest. None of the apartments over there seem to have AC or central air of any sort, so it's even more of a threat than a heatwave would be in the Midwest.


Windows in all of the places we've virtually toured also seem to have horizontally sliding windows, which means that a classic box AC window unit that I'm used to wouldn't be an option. I guess there are also forest fires in the area as well and so I've read that people in the area also buy air purifiers. What have I signed up for?!








































My favorite guy on the team is Yadier Molina and he is nearing the end of his career, so it was an especially big treat to see him play up close.






















We worked this poor lady half to death. Keep those beers coming!




























Saturday, June 26, 2021

Missouri Hicks on the River

Despite my recent grievous injuries on our last float trip I signed up for more abuse. This time we hit Garrison Canoe Rental & Campground in Steelville, Missouri. There was a lot of rain in the forecast, and we got dumped on pretty good, so we opted to just float and not stay the night.


This time was the Meramec River. I've done this several times and... I'm going to be honest with you every single river looks the same to me.










I put on a disgusting amount of sunblock this time to show my disdain for heavenly fireballs.




For some reason Lydia was drawn to eating at Missouri Hick Bar-B-Q.