Friends are Good

Today was a good day. I rolled out of bed at 11AM and went for a quick dip in the pool. Renee and Nichole showed up around noon and it was good to see them. Renee is my best girl friend and someone that I dated for almost 2 years. Nichole is her 16 year-old sister. They were in L.A. for 4 days and are here for 2. We deicided to go downtown to shop, eat dinner and ultimately head to Petco for the Padres-Astros game.

TWO-AND-A-HALF hours later they finished getting ready and we left the apartment. By now we were pretty hungry so we sopped by In N' Out. The Double Double animal style is by far the best fast food burger you'll ever find. Sadly, the girls got cheeseburgers but what are you gonna do, they're girls. We finally got downtown around 3:15 and went to a cool outdoor mall. I forget the name but I think it's pretty famous. They pranced around and looked for clothes while I checked out other women. It really wasn't too bad. We ate at Moose McGillicutty's and ate some of the WORST food any of us had ever tasted. If you're ever in San Diego, stay away from Moose McGillicutty's, trust me.

We got to the ticket office at 6:35 and there was a huge line. Renee bitched at me a bit for not buying tickets early but I was confident that I could bust out my scalping skills if necessary to make up for bad planning. As we approached the line a girl was waving 2 tickets. I said, "how much?" and she said, "take 'em!" Sweet, 2 free tickets. Then a shadier character came up and sold us a $12 ticket for $10. $3.33 per ticket works for me, even though one of the tickets ended up being $3.34.

The game was awesome because I finally got to see Trevor Hoffman come out to AC/DC's Hells Bells. This has been a dream of mine for quite some time and the reality lived up to the dream. Hoffman is the quintessential closer: Intimidating goatee, good strikeout pitch, and AWESOME theme music. The Padres were up 7-2 in the 8th but a few ripped singles and a timely Joe Randa error gave the Astros the necessary 2 runs and I finally got to see Trevor. I went right by the bullpen to watch him warm up, then when the 9th inning started we head the familiar "dong" and as all eyes turned to the bullpen door the crowd got to their feet, erupting in cheers as Trevor bust through. Serious goosebumps, man. This may seem trivial to most people but to big baseball fans it's truly a great experience. He walked the leadoff hitter, a cardinal sin in baseball, but got the next 3 batters, F9, K, and F8. This was aso a historic save for Mr. Hoffman. With save number 425 he passed John Franco and now is alone in second place for all-time saves. He's 54 away from passing Lee Smith for number one and I think he'll do it. He already has 32 this year and shows no signs of slowing down.

The game today showed me how crappy the Padres really are. Their execution was atrocious and any good team would have scored 12 runs tonight. Funny how their 63-63 record has them in first place by 6 GAMES!

Well, I got a bit sidetracked there but the main point here was that I had a great time with the girls. I love it down here but it's hard to meet people when you don't have a job and don't go to school. It really gives me a greater appreciation for my friends and family and I'm going to try really hard not to lose touch with any of them.

We're going to cruise down the 101 tomorrow and be lazy. The 101 is a real pretty highway and it whould be a lot of fun. We''l do some more shopping/girl watching in Pacific Beach and the girls will head home Friday morning. I'll definitely miss 'em.