Thanks for all the well-wishes for my cousin Aaron in Iraq. His Mom (and maybe his Dad also) reads this blog now from time to time and I'm sure she appreciates them a great deal.
Gas prices - I know everyone back in the States is going crazy over gas prices being over $2.00/gallon (rightly so perhaps), but let me drop these figures on you for some perspective. Last week Friday, gas (or petrol as referred to here) was around $3.85/gallon. Then on Saturday it shot up to approx. $4.40/gallon!! Then back
down to around $3.50/gallon on Monday. How's that for gas prices!
Pre-packaged meat pies here are sort of like small pot-pies in the U.S. and typically don't necessarily have vegetables. Well, I had my first meat pie courtesy of Karyn's dad at a Brisbane Lions football game a few weeks ago. You just rip it out of the package and eat it with your bare hands. Well, on Saturday when I was down at South Bank, I ordered a meat pie, and sat down getting ready to eat it (they really taste great!) and realized the kid at the counter forgot to put a fork in the bag. See, I thought the whole 'eat it with your hands' things was just because it was at a football game. Well, when I went back to ask for a fork, the kid responded with, "uh... yeah... maybe there's a fork around here somewhere". Then, as I started to eat it, with a fork, I could see people glancing in my direction with that "what the hell are you doing" look. I thought I was just imagining it, but after I talked it over with my friend, apparently eating meat pies with a fork stops at about 8 years old! It wasn't just a football stadium thing - you're supposed to eat these things with your hands and people were looking at me like I was some kind of a mutant!
OK - now for something really cool. I called Karen on the cell (mobile) phone this morning, about 6:15 p.m. K'zoo time, about 15 minutes after Eddie's baseball game started. As we were talking, she said "oh, wait a minute, Eddie's up to bat" I asked her if she would give me a play by play of his first at-bat for the day, and here it is:
Eddie steps up to plate, pitch is on the way, he swings, and foul tips it off the top of the bat.
He gets back into his stance, pitch on the way, oooh - it almost hit him but he foul-tipped it.
Third pitch was a ball.
He's back in the box. Pitch on the way, bam - hit between the 1st and 2nd baseman - he's on base with a single!
How cool was that?!!! I got an international
LIVE play by play of my son's first at-bat for the day - that was so great!
I talked to him today also and he told me about another great play that he was excited about. He was on third, batter pops one up, he makes the catch (which he was excited enough about) then notices the runner at first took off running without tagging up, so he throws the kid out at first to turn his first double play! Not bad eh?
