When Shirley came over for my birthday dinner last month, she brought over some dee-lish-us peanut butter cookies. She also brought over the extra cookie dough, which I left in the fridge and rediscovered a few days ago. I have to say, having freshly baked peanut butter cookies is a wonderful treat. Even better, being able to have a single cookie, without having the temptation of eating a dozen of them.

A couple weeks ago, a follow Master Gardener emailed out an offer for Giants tickets. Her family owned a block of seats, and normally managed to find takers within the family to occupy all the seats in the block. However, this July 4th weekend, the family was having a reunion that everyone was going to attend, leaving the family with Giants tickets they weren't going to use. Did anyone want to buy them?

I asked Kris if he wanted to go, and he liked the July 4th times, and said yes. I suspect if he had realized just how fabulous the seats were, he might hvae said yes to all of the games.

Now, I can count all of the professional baseball games I've been to on one hand. I can also count all of the professional baseball games I've been to that I've enjoyed on one finger. Kris knew this, so offered to make today's games as painless as possible for me. Instead of a long day including a train up to the City, train back and a full game, he suggested we drive.

We drove up, found a great, very close parking structure and walked over to the ballpark. On the way over, Kris leaned over and commented, "Whatever you do, don't call it a Dodger dog."

That man spoils all of my fun.

We arrived after the first inning had started, but not before it had ended. We managed to purchase our Dodger Dogs, er, Giant Dogs, which really weren't so giant. I also had Kris buy me a Coke, which would be my second Coca Cola of the year and my ninth of the decade. Yeah, not really a big soda fan.

When we went to look for our seats, we were pleased to discover just how wonderful the seats were. We were in the 9th row just past the third base. Holy crap, I thought, these seats are awesome. Kris' response was, "Wow, the players are big!"

And big they were. Not really the size of us mere mortals.

Given how close we were to the field, we could see each player well. To really take advantage of the event, and the opportunity to see everyone well, I made Kris talk out loud as he was watching the game. He's always told me there's a lot of drama in a game, so I wanted to hear it.

He pointed out how the pitchers stand differently based on the runners on the bases. He pointed out how differently the outfields position themselves based on the hitters. He predicted various upcoming pitches.

And speaking of pitches, to my joy, Lincecum was pitching today.

He pitched really well. The Houston pitcher was also pitching well, pitching 5 and 2/3 innings before an error by the shortstop started the Giants run of a lot of points. Well, Kris said it was a shortstop error. The official scorekeeper didn't mark it as an error, though.

I wondered how the crowd around me would have marked it. The crowd around us was fabulous, with one guy a couple rows up quite interested and marking stats.

He would often turn to the people behind him, in front of us, and talk to them about the game, tell them something informative that also helped me understand the game, too. The guy behind me seemed to be explaining the game to his girlfriend, who was asking even more clueless questions that I was. For the most part, I enjoyed his banter. I didn't particular enjoyed when he yelled and cheered, though.

Still.

We ended up leaving after the seventh inning, when the Giants were up 8-1. Kris said he wanted to make sure we left early enough that I was still enjoying myself, so that I'd be willing to go to another game.

And, what do you know? I had a great time at the game. With this experience, I think we could go to another game together.

I've been handling the books for Mischief again this year, to Kris' near complete consternation. He's annoyed with me for agreeing to be part of the team when he feels I should move on. While I'll agree I'd enjoy the season more if I could actually practice with the team, I don't think he quite understands how much social benefits I draws (and therefore he draws) from being part of such an awesome community.

At least, I didn't think he recognized it until today.

Adam Brown wanted to work off his team dues, an offer I made to anyone on the team who wanted to work 11 hours for their dues instead of paying cash up front. Kris heard word of this and decided to take matters into his own hands for the Christmas gift I had given him late last year: a car stereo that he could hook his iPod into. I was inspired by Doyle's stereo, and wanted to give Kris the option of listening to books on CD or from his iPod. Of course, this was before he switched jobs from a 40 minute commute to a 5 minute commute.

So, Kris arranged to have Adam install a new stereo in his car. We wandered over to Fry's to look at stereos, with Kris' wanting to buy the cheapest one and my wanting to buy the least expensive one that had nice buttons. Fortunately, the price difference between the two was only $20, and the nicer buttons won.

Unfortunately, the process of taking apart a Civic dashboard isn't particularly straightforward and took Adam around 4 hours to do, just to get started.

He spent most of yesterday working on the car, pulling out the dashboard, disconnecting the old stereo, buying the new one with the new frame insert to hold it, fighting with the dozen extra screws he ended up with at the end (always a scary thing).

When we purchased the stereo, we bought a stereo connector, too. At one point during the day, when I was in the office, I heard Kris and Adam launch into a huff about how the connector we were sold was the wrong size, it totally didn't fit the back of the stereo we had. Adam asked if we wanted to go back to Fry's or if he should just cut the connector at the back of the stereo and solder or twist the wires together. I was fairly unaware of the conversation until it permeated my consciousness and I realized that something was quite amiss.

I went outside to look at the connector itself. Turns out, the connector plugged into the harness, not the stereo. It needed to be connected to the connector wires coming out of the stereo, no soldering or harness wire cutting needed.

Admittedly, I was amused at both the let's-do-the-hardest-thing-possible attitude of Kris and Adam, and ease of the actual solution.

When Adam finished installing the stereo this morning, he came in to talk to us. Turns out, three of the lights on the stereo were broken, and didn't light at all. He recommended returning the stereo for another one. I said, nah, to Adam's surprise. I didn't think Kris would mind, as long as the stereo worked. Those last three buttons weren't really that important.

Adam had to ask three times if I was sure. How many times have I seen people reject good items because they weren't perfect? How many tonnes of food is discarded yearly because it wasn't perfect? Way too many. The stereo worked. So what if a button didn't light. It was fine.

When Kris saw, he agreed.

Here's another item off my to-do list. Thanks, Adam!

From http://shawnblanc.net/2009/06/mac-setup-jon-hicks/, describing his setup, Jon Hicks commented:

"I still own a 1st generation MacBook Pro, as well as a last generation G4 Powerbook and 1st generation Titanium Powerbook. The Titanium is held together by stickers (I lost all the screws), and the stickers help prevent electric shocks from the coating that has been rubbed away on the top!"

My first thought was "Still, huh? That's what I currently use!"

I guess my system is crap, if I haven't moved on yet.

Andy and Andy came over tonight. We talked about playing Settlers, but Skinny Andy wanted to play Diplomacy. S.Andy played Diplomacy a lot when he was in high school ("A LOT!"), and wanted to see how it played now that he was older. The game has a maximum of seven players, and is like Risk in that you conquer Europe during some giant "world" war, but is different than Risk in that you can make deals with other players, removing some of the luck of the dice from the game.

Diplomacy is played with a map of Europe, with each player controlling one or more countries, and little tiles representing armies and navies. At the beginning of each round, each player decides what a piece is going to do: stay put and defend the space it's on, move into a new space and attack any other piece that may be already occupying the space, or help another piece move to a new space which is what the navy pieces can do. In deciding these moves or non-moves, players can talk to each other. Before the discussion part of the round ends, each player writes down what he's going to do for that round, which is revealed nominally all at once to everyone.

Since I wanted chocolate souffle, I was unfortunately in the kitchen during the boys' reading of the rules. Given there are a large number of nuances in the game (one of the worst being, if you wrote it down, you can't change it), and I was absent for most of their revelations, I ended up breaking an unknown rule every round. I have to say for that reason alone, my frustration grew and grew and grew with the game (hey, you can't do that, now you're penalized; you can't do that either, go back; you can't do that either, you lose another piece; you can't do that, take it back).

We started out all of us just sitting there, trying to figure out what to do with our pieces. By the third round, we were talking a short bit, but none of us were really managing to do much with our countries and pieces. Well, except for Skinny Andy. He knew what he was doing, and was doing it well.

By the fourth round, we figured out that we could pass notes back and forth between each other. Suddenly, negotiation and, well, diplomacy were possible.

I have to say, that certain aspects of the game were entertaining. Fat Andy complaining about how everyone was attacking him, while he was leading the charge on attacking one of my two countries, was funny. That I came around from his back flanks to out manuveur him was equally funny. Skinny Andy I think would have crushed us, given enough time. Kris was, I think, overwhelmed to the point of being nearly ineffective, often forgetting to write down steps that he had agreed to during our diplomatic conversations.

We played for a couple hours, then decided to be done. I ended up both completely devastated, with Germany having only one piece, and victorious, with Turkey having the most number of pieces, the broadest number of spaces occupied, and, arguably, the best position for future conquest.

Given how much Skinny Andy loved the game as a kid, I'm willing to play again. I can't say without that motivation that I'd be willing.