Take Me Out...

Thursday. The Padres/Dodgers game was scheduled for 12:30. Antsiness seems to run in the family; Dad got us on the road well ahead of time. D has a new GPS navigator in his car, and is still at the gee-wow stage about it. I was more interested in the audio, specifically in the pronunciation of the word "left". ( Digression on lateral onsets )

Anyway, we got to the vicinity of the park early, and had a bite at a nearby Subway. At the park, I picked up a souvenir program, and also bought a Padres shirt. (Normally I wouldn't, but C had said that everyone at the party Sunday would be expected to wear some piece of baseball clothing, so...) The game itself wasn't bad; Chris Young pitched six good innings, and left with the score tied. Unfortunately, the first two relievers, Sikorski and Adkins, couldn't keep the lid on; the Dodgers scored four times in the seventh and went on to a 7-3 win. I can't complain too much, though. During my visit, the Padres did well enough to regain a share of the division lead (and as of this writing are alone in first, a game ahead of the Evil Blue Empire). The park is very nice; we had good seats, down in the left-field corner, and a clear view of every pitch. Maybe next time I'll actually get to see them win. (Also, maybe next time I'll get a chance to see Khalil Greene live. He'd been slumping, and Bochy decided to give him the day off in favor of Geoff Blum.)

Same Auld Lang Syne

Friday. The big event that day was a lunch with D and J, a couple of old classmates. We selected a restaurant near my father's place; J would pick me up, and D would meet us there.

The initial steps of the plan went off without a hitch; J, accompanied by his wife B (a vivacious Argentinean), arrived at my father's doorstep as planned, at about noon.

Unfortunately, the restaurant we'd chosen turned out not to open until 5:00.

When D arrived, a brief conference led us to another nearby restaurant, Millie's Café. (Millie's? Minnie's? Damn. Something like that.) The food there was delicious; I ordered chicken feta penne, which, along with the titular ingredients, also contained pine nuts, tomatoes, asiago cheese, and assorted other goodies. The food was also plentiful. I cleaned my plate (I always clean my plate, which probably has something to do with my inability to get my weight down under 185 lbs), but the others had to resort to doggie bags.

Thirty years is a long time, and memories mutate. An incident or two which remained vivid in my mind had apparently vanished completely from D's and J's (for which I think I'm thankful...), and the converse also held. (J credited me with teaching him the International Phonetic Alphabet in high school, but I have no memory of that. I know that I was thoroughly familiar with the IPA by then, having spent many hours poring over the diagrams in a book on articulatory phonetics and trying to imitate them, but... I said nothing, as his story redounded to my credit, but I felt a little guilty afterwards.) There was a small amount of reminiscence, but mostly we tried to catch each other up. Lots of travel stories; culture shock (B's, on coming to the US; D's, on returning from a year in Brazil); work stories (J promised to send me some references on sea shanties and other folk music)... It was remarkably comfortable. J is involved in music these days - helping with arrangements by day, performing, when possible, in the evening - which doesn't surprise me; D got a degree in physics and is apparently still involved in it, but I don't recall her actually saying what she did these days. Other classmates drifted in and out of the conversation; there were a scant handful we could place, but most of it was of the "where is...?" variety.

Say, whatever did happen to...?