The Oakland A's won last night. It was fun, going to a baseball game to soak up Americana, especially on the eve of Independence Day. Cannot get more of homeland culture than in a town not suburbia like San Ramon. So we ate oily garlic fries and fish and chips and the kids had some cotton candy and very expensive dibbs. And we watched the A's thrash the Blue Jays and did the wave several times and added our share to raising the decibel levels when the signboards told us to make noise. We had picked Marta, Nic's best friend, up and the 5 of us sat in quite a good area so we had a good view except of course for the constant traffic of people selling stuffs and folks going up and down to get yet more food or beer. Ryan's first baseball game and Nic summed it up towards the end with "you so have to bring us to more games" or something like that.
The game ended with everyone standing up to watch the last moments of victory and then the crowd on the upper levels started streaming down, crowding the aisles. Then on to the field after the officials had set up barricades to protect the play area. When everyone had settled down on their picnic blankets which took quite a while, the fireworks started and it was an extravaganza, a symphony of fire to patriotic American songs over the sound system.
Getting out of the stadium was a traffic challenge but what would you expect? Thank you GuGu for Garmin Nuvi! She has become an indispensable companion on trips to the unknown and a real life saver. All in all, a totally good experience. Too bad the Man was not around to share it with us. Today, I checked my cell and it seems he called at about 9:30pm. We would not have heard the phone over the cacophony in the stadium, especially as it was about the end of the game when the A's were about to end with a 3 to 1 home run victory over the poor Canadians.
To my bitter dismay, none of the two cameras I successfully bidded on eBay showed up so I have no pictures to share. One of the sellers actually live in San Leandro and if I had known, I could have picked up the camera myself days ago. And he obviously did not bother to check that I live in a place he visits regularly and he could also have dropped the camera off at our home. Because I paid by check, he had to wait for it to clear, otherwise it would have taken only 2 days to get the camera, blah blah blah... A strange confluence of events cascading one on another that ended up with his offering to cancel the sale and refund the money to which I heartily agreed. And the other camera has just only been shipped yesterday. So I will still be unable to take any pictures of today's fireworks at Central Park. Bummer!
The good news is the half man has taken lots of pics and some videos with the camera from YY and will be posting them on his own blog. So watch out for them.
And this morning, had to drag myself and Nic out of bed at 6 to send her to Central Park where she was a volunteer at the San Ramon 10K run. Over a thousand people turned up for the run and Nik's son, Calvin, came in third for his age group. As for me, I went home after dropping her off to resume my sleep. It was like death, I was so tired. And since I brought her home at 10, that girl has been in dreamland, making up for lost sleep.
And Lay Keow came over half an hour ago to drop off a bag of plums from her garden and share a story about an impending marriage in her family. That's a story I cannot share.
More later about our adventures of the rest of our first Independence Day...
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