Oh. My. God.

Today had to be one of the very best days of my life as a Twins fan. Ho-ly cow, I am in heaven right now. We went into today’s game (the last game of the regular season) tied with the Tigers for first place in the division. The division winner will play Oakland at home, the wild card winner goes to Yankee Stadium. We had been in first place for a total of several hours for the whole season, and were now tied for a few days for the division lead. And it all came down to today. What needed to happen? We absolutely needed to win today’s game and Detroit absolutely had to lose. If we BOTH won or BOTH lost, Detroit would be the central division champions because they had a winning record in the season series of the two teams. We had to win against the White Sox, Detroit had to lose at home against the Royals, who have lost 100 games this year. 162 games in the season, and so much was riding on this last one. We won easily, but it wasn’t looking hopeful when the Tigers jumped out 6-0 in four innings. Then, the Royals, (who had also won the first two games of the series) amazingly started scoring runs. The Tigers were unraveling. By the seventh inning, the Royals were on top 7-6. By the end of nine innings, the two teams were tied 8-8. Those scrappy Royals just wouldn’t give up. They had nothing to play for and even less to lose. The Tigers were forced to bring in their would-be starter for the first playoff game. They had bases loaded in the eleventh and couldn’t score. Finally in the twelfth the Royals scared two and went on to win, giving Twins the central division. At the Metrodome, well after the Twins game was done, 60,000 fans were screaming, “Let’s go ROY-ALS!” watching the improbable unfold on the jumbotron.

That isn’t nearly all that happened today, the last day of the regular season. Joe Mauer won the batting title! The first American League catcher to win the title and the first catcher to have the best batting average in both leagues. He was the first Twin since Kirby did it in 1989 which made the occasion bittersweet. We have the AL batting champ, and a shoe in for the Cy Young. Johan Santana finished with the pitchers trinity: leading the AL in ERA, wins and strikeouts. Justin Morneau has a very good chance of being named MVP (that’s not as clear cut as the other two), but he also tied the record for most runs batted in for a season by a Canadian (tied with Larry Walker). Very cool for Justin also.

We wished so badly we could have been there to see all this live, but with the baseball package we were able to flip between the Twins, the Tigers and the Yankees (both Jeter and Cano threatened to overtake Mauer for batting title today). We settled for buying a couple bottles of champagne and talking about the events incessantly. I am so pumped for the post season!

GO TWINS!!!

Old Friends Revisited, Part II

Remember Angelina Fettuccine? Well, she's my other "old friend revisited" that I promised my readers. Out of the blue when I was in Minneapolis, I got an email from her titled "Surprise! It's me!" I was shocked. And delighted. She said she had first contacted my dad looking for me and he gave her my email address.

The internet is a wonderful thing. If she would have called me up, I would have been at a total loss for words. Instead, after quickly acknowledging her email and telling her of my recent nuptials, I took a couple days to work on getting her updated. I spent a couple minutes a day here and there thinking of things I wanted to tell her.

She is still living in New Mexico with her husband. She works for the same large financial firm that my dad does, she has two dogs and no kids yet. She said when she does, she wants them to grow up with a best friend just like me *sniffle*.

After we got caught up, the reminiscing started. We are still exchanging emails frequently, renewing our friendship- a task made remarkably simple in the information age. In our adolescence I always felt like I was the one working just a little bit harder. I am pleasantly surprsed at the promptness and fervor of her communication. I send her a message, and hear back within the hour. I am the one to often wait until the next day to resume the discussion. I like this change in her, and see how badly she wants to rekindle our bond and how deeply she finally values what we shared growing up. I am a realist. I know that it may die off, we may again get busy with our lives. But this time I feel more confident that if we drift apart, we will find our way back.

Clinched

To everyone who said the Twins:

• should pack up and go home when it was only May


• could never pass the World Champ White Sox
  


• aren't for real


• were done when Liriano got hurt


• were done when Radke got hurt


• don't have enough power


• don't have starting pitching


• wouldn't make it down the stretch

I say:

SUCK IT.

Married Life Part II

Before I actually get into what married life is like so far (sorry, anonymous blog buddy, I'm getting there I promise!) I want to address a question Jackie posed on the first part of my married life discussion.

So was this planned or was it a spur of the moment type thing???

The short answer is: sortof. The long answer follows.

Waaaaaay back in December, Dean approached me with what he called "a plan". He suggested we fly to Vegas and get married sometime within a year. That would give him time to save up for a ring and for a trip and it would be romantic. At first I was unsure. Ever since moving to Florida I had wanted to get married on the beach. The reality of beach weddings though is that if you want them on private property they are quite expensive. If you are content getting married on a public beach there will be fat ladies in bikinis in your wedding photos. Florida has problems with red tide, the weather can be unpredictable and an expensive white dress will end up salty and dirty. I loved the idea of a beach wedding but I realized the logistics were too much for me. So after some debate I shrugged and said, "Okay, let's do it."

We managed to keep it completely secret for a few months. As time went by I felt more convinced that this was the way to go. I wasn't sure my extended family would fly down to Florida for a wedding and I sure as hell wasn't going to try to plan one from 1600 miles away. At the time he suggested it we didn't have a lot of money, I didn't have my felowship, Dean had just started his job and we were in transition. I knew my parents would help us financially with a wedding but I didn't know how much. I felt my mom out about wedding stuff and she jokingly offered me a large sum of money to elope so she wouldn't have to deal with wedding stuff. Good enough for me.

Dean's original idea was romantic. Once every few nights we'd cuddle up on the couch and talk about "the plan" mostly void of any details except running away and getting hitched. He didn't want anyone to know. He wanted to call our parents from Vegas and shock them, imagining sheer delight at acquiring instant in-laws.

I agreed- I thought this would be great. And then I got greedy. Spring was coming, we were making grown up money. I waited 6 long years for an engagement ring and I could taste it. Dean wanted to get both the engagement ring and the bands at once right before we left. I wanted it now. I pled my case. I deserved to be a fiance. What would people think if I got my ring so close to being in Vegas? Would they think I got a cheap knock-off in such a gaudy city? This wouldn't do. The money was just sitting there, taunting me. So like any good boyfriend, Dean relented and I got my ring.

I never anticipated the firestorm of questions. Did we have any plans? A date? Before graduation or after? Honestly, I didn't think anyone would care so much. I'd been in a long-term relationship and I thought people would yawn and say, "well it's about time."

We had to rethink this. We had to negotiate our plans a little so that we weren't lying to people. Our parents would need to know. After the parents could know, there was the issue of having a party or something in which case more people would have to know. We ended up in a compromise where our parents and a couple of friends knew. My mom discreetly planned a party and told people only a couple weeks in advance and most of my friends, lab mates and you guys were still in the dark , not to mention the people in the periphery of my life.

All in all we started with a plan and like most plans, things didn't go exactly the way we wanted. I joke that this is what happens when a boy plans your wedding. We reached a point where we decided to just go with it, let whatever happens happen and don't be disappointed with detours because no matter how much time, money and effort you put in it, things will never be perfect. I still love that it was Dean's idea. That we did it privately, low pressure, low cost. We spent a little extra money on my engagement ring and wedding band because I will enjoy them the rest of my life. Like I mentioned before, we have money waiting for us when we want to buy a house. We spent time with family with absolutely no stress. I'm so happy it's obscene. More later. And if you are sick of this lovey dovey crap, too bad. I'm a newlywed.

Old Friends Revisited, Part I

A theme of late on this blog is what to do about friends who simply don’t hold up their end of the relationship, drift away, or show themselves to be something different from what you believed. What do you do? Try to help? Try to mend? Try to let go? Give them time and space and hope they will find their way back? Of course all of these things are heavily dependent upon circumstance, but my readers have generally expressed their spectrum of opinions, all for which I am grateful.

I named this post “Old Friends Revisited, Part I” because I actually have two stories that fall under this heading, but I’ll save one for a little later (thus the Part I. Genius, right Scott? *wink*).

This particular post concerns a friend whose situation I first introduced recently here. Truthfully, readers, I wasn’t content with the advice any of you had for me. Again, it is based on circumstance. You all had insightful things to say but none of them felt right for me and my situation. And even writing the letter didn’t quite satisfy me the way I believed it would.

A few days before we left for Las Vegas, I heard a rumor circulating around the department that the friend in the aforementioned post had taken a job teaching high school in Vegas. This left me in an odd situation. Should I make one last ditch effort to see what the hell he was thinking? To make sure he’s alright and not bipolar? Or worse, suicidal? And at what point do I weigh the notion that Dean and I are “eloping”?

I talked it over with Dean and he (being a much more forgiving soul than I), really felt that we would regret not at least making an attempt to see our friend. And if we were ignored or rejected, we could feel confident in washing our hands of him. So I sent him a lukewarm email telling him that I heard he lived in Vegas now, and that if this is true and would like to meet with Dean and I to respond. If not, I would respect his decision and leave him alone.

I heard back almost immediately and he seemed relieved that someone was reaching out to him. He called me (from his new, undisclosed number) shortly after to make sure I had gotten his response and to set up a time and place to meet. He and his current FOM (flavor of the month, a different issue entirely) ended up picking us up from the airport and we stayed up late at the hotel bar catching up. I did get a chance to gently voice the opinion that I and the majority of my friends and co-workers have (to one extent or another). And was ultimately unsatisfied with his answers. Basically, I am thinking he himself doesn’t really have answers. He knows people are hurt and disappointed not so much in his decision to teach at the high school level despite earning his Ph.D. but at the way he left things. Of course from a professional standpoint people are disappointed in his decision, but it boils down to following your heart. There are two well-defined sides to that coin. What upset me most was a general lack of remorse. He was still flippant about blowing town, and shrugged it off with an insincere ‘sorry’. I stressed that the people he spent all his waking hours with in the lab were just as qualified to offer life advice to him as the people he actually went to. Is there such a thing as listening to too many points of view? Maybe when none of them are what you really want to hear. And what he really wanted to hear was, “Go, teach high school,” and “You’re making the right decision.” I don’t necessarily think anyone of us would have said that.

In the end I am convinced that our friend is happy for the time being, until he gets restless again. Until there is something else that floats his boat. The sharp edge of my hurt is softening into more of an indifference. He is contacting people all of a sudden, sending more personal emails (the phone number for some reason is still undisclosed) and people are thanking me for sending him the signal that it isn’t too late for him to make amends with some of us. In sum, the right opportunity presented itself. I still have not let him off the hook, but maybe I’ve helped some other people deal with the question of what to do about this wayward friend.