Day: June 21, 2006

Saw the Brooklyn Cyclones opening game Tuesday night.  Boy, is that Coney Island subway station looking really nice or what?  The game – well, that’s a different story.  Cyclones v. Staten Island Yankees.  Essentially, Minor League Mets v. Minor League Yankees.  Essentially, the Cyclones v. last year’s champs (in minor league world).  Which means either the Yankees were really good, or the Cyclones… is a work in progress (to put it diplomatically).  We left around 10:30, with the Cyclones losing 15-0.  I think they finally lost at 18-0.  Plus, that half-hour game delay due to the umpire’s getting injured and the teams waiting for a backup umpire to show up.  Oh well.

They now have Official Keyspan Park Dumplings at the Cyclones’ home.

And in other sports news: Carolina Hurricanes beat Edmonton Oilers for the Stanley Cup.  Too bad for Canada, yet again.  I was hoping they’d win the Cup, considering its their national sport and the lockout was quite a bummer.

There’s also the whole Miami Heat beating Dallas Mavericks for NBA Championships.  Head Coach Pat Reilly winning (but never for the Knicks?!); Alonzo Mourning winning (that other Georgetown champ; but never his old friend/ex-Knickbocker, Patrick Ewing); Shaquille O’Neal; Dwayne Wade; Gary Payton; etc.  Lucky them.

I did not know that the space folks discovered that Pluto had more moons.  But, the news is that they’ve given them official names: Nix and Hydra.  Both names have underwold connotations, to be consistent with Pluto (the Roman king of the underworld) and its other moon, Charon (the river of the underworld).

In Washington state, they have made it illegal for doctors to write prescriptions in cursive script.  Doctor, you’re either going to have to print it by hand or computer.  Aww shucks.

On Friday night, saw Disney’s “Cars” at the world’s largest drive in movie theater. The experience was pretty unique, but I don’t think it is better than your modern movieplex experience. First of all, the sound quality over a radio is not as good as THX booming sound. Second, car seats do not provide the same comfort as theater seats. Third, the jockeying for position in the lot is fierce, and hard to do without headlights ( I ran over a few pylons in the dark). Then again, traditionally the movie is not the main entertainment of the night… Anyway, took some long exposures of the screen – check it out on the Flickr bar.

Saturday’s drive back involved a stop at Sawgrass, a really huge outlet mall. Bought father’s day stuff, a pair of sandals, and got a 20 minute massage. Then, the drive down to Miami was generally uneventful other than the last minute finding of a gas pump before the car return.

On the flight back, got an upgrade on American and sat next to a New York based captain. Food wasn’t too bad, but the direct to video movie Last Holiday kept us hungry. Queen Latifah and LL Cool J managed to con a movie studio to fund an extravagant vacation. As the FAs were wheeling chicken breast and bbq sauce, Latifah was being wheeled whole turkey. Anyway, the captain was very nice about pointing out different landmarks. We were also talking about noise cancelling headphones.

Waiting for the baggage to come out of the carosel, this guy that was sitting in front of us was complaining about how long the wait was. The taxi home was uneventful other than that he had no idea where downtown Brooklyn was, so I had to direct him. I made it by 11 pm.

Sunday, we took P’s dad out for dim sum, and I formally asked him for permission to marry P, which he gave his blessing. So now we’re loading up on watching the WE channel, which is having a 21 day wedding show marathon. We’re shooting for 2008, because we want and need to take our time, and the Wall Street Journal says that 2007 is a bad year for weddings (2006 is one of the best years), because it is lacking a lunar spring.