B365V2.58 - Hazard pay

I would apologize for not blogging yesterday, but as I said when I opted to do a 365 version 2.0, blogs would not be forthcoming every day, but rather when I felt like it.  There is too much pressure in trying to come up with content on a daily basis, and far too often my entries, such as they were, consisted of me saying " I have nothing to say."

Yesterday was a little different though, I did do my guest blogging thing, as soon as it gets posted I will direct my fan club members that way.  But that will be up to Erin, her and I have exchanged messages on the topic, she is going on vacation and will probably use my stuff as material in her absence one day.  But nothing is carved in stone yet, in part because I don't know if either of us owns a chisel.

So it came to pass yesterday that I did make it back to my bench, and I did do a blog entry, just not for here.  But I am coming to learn something by sitting here, I should be getting hazard pay.  I risk braving the elements when I sit here, though tonight is mostly pleasant, but around these parts this year if it isn't raining we aren't trying hard enough.  Then there is the whole mystery behind the drug truck, it made another appearance Monday night, if only to leave as soon as I sat down, the missing persons jacked that was on the fence behind me for a few days before someone or something claimed it as well, my run in with the local constabulary for doing nothing more than sitting here and typing and smoking a cigarette at the same time.  Wonder what the penalty is around these parts for walking and chewing gum?

Then there was last night, as I was finishing up my as to yet to be revealed blog entry, a car pulled up on the road behind me.  That wasn't shocking, it was daylight and there were plenty of kids on the playground.  Two black females got out of the car, one of which was on a cell phone.  Now I know it is impolite to listen in on people's conversations, but when you are loud enough that the people in the park can clearly hear you, it becomes less about eavesdropping and more about not owning ear plugs.  Anyway, as she is on her phone the conversation goes something like this " You mean he got shot two times and shot back."  "He knew the niggers in the car."  "Well I probably knew them niggers too then."  Now I realize I probably have offended a few readers there, but I am just quoting what was actually said.  I am not going to censor myself to a degree where I change the existing facts as they were at that time.  So save the righteous indignation, it doesn't play here.  My main concern at the time was my own well being and the fact that these ladies obviously consort with people who bust caps in other people.  Not wanting to be any of the people on the receiving end of caps, the bustee as opposed to the buster, I got my ass out of there.

But now I am back here again, no drug truck, nothing crawling out of the woods to leave my clothing behind, no rain and no busting of caps.  It is dare I say, relatively quiet, just cars driving by and the chirping of crickets.  Even the life flight choppers seem to have taken the night off.

Figures just as I type that a helicopter flies overhead.  And the quiet has been interrupted by fireworks from over at PNC Park.  Every now and again one gets high enough that I can see the color through the tree leaves behind me, but mostly it is just a lot of muffled popping.  It odd though because usually the Pirates save fireworks for either Friday or Saturday night games, even though Fireworks Night is almost always a sellout, so perhaps they are trying to boost attendance on a week night.

Wow, I just had one of those happy flash back moments.  The year was probably around 1991, so let's grab us some Peabody and Sherman and hit the Wayback machine kids.  I had gotten some baseball tickets, from whom or how I have no idea, though given I was trying to impress someone  ( it was Hope for you long time readers of the blog, for newbies, get with the program, will ya? ) I most likely bought them, knowing in advance it was Fireworks Night.  I had walked over to her apartment and asked her if she wanted to go and she said yes and me being in my pre - 21 state of mind thought it would be a romantic evening if we went to dinner first.  The thing is, the Gateway Clipper fleet runs a shuttle service to the stadiums on game days, running from Station Square across the Mon and Ohio rivers and up the Allegheny to what was then Three Rivers Stadium.  Me being all Rico Suave, thought we could grab dinner at Station Square, then hop a boat over to the game.  Everything that could go wrong did.  First there was a 40 minute wait for a table for dinner, still we get our table and have dinner, though I don't know what we had, then we walked down to the boat dock, where there was an incredibly long line to get on the boat.  By the time we got on the boat, and made it to the stadium and our seats, the game was already in the third inning and we were losing, of course.  And it was raining, not too hard just an annoying drizzle.  Worse was giant score board was in the upper deck out in center field, so you can guess where our seats ended up being, the upper deck in center field.  In order to see it you would have to to a 180 in your seat and contend with an umbrella.  There were people behind us, they had brought in a giant bag of popcorn ( back in the day kids, you were allowed to bring your own snacks rather than pay concession prices, and you could ride the bus for $1, see I am old ) but unbeknownst to the security people, ( what security people, this is pre 9/11 here), the reason for all of the popcorn was they smuggled beer into the stadium by burying cans of beer in the bag of popcorn.  Which was all clever and good until they open one and poured it down the back of my shirt.  The Pirates would go on to lose, 8-5 I think was the final, adding to the list of things that could go wrong.  At least the rain had let up enough that they could do the fireworks.  So they killed the lights inside the stadium, and Hope grabbed my hand and her eyes just got all big, like a kid seeing the Christmas tree on Christmas morning and dude I was sold.  Everything that led up to that moment was worth it.

Okay, before everyone goes and thinks I am getting soft in my old age I should stop now.  I still have to go make me some dinner. And two cars have pulled up behind me while sitting here, there are girls in them giggling a lot and anyone familiar with a slasher flick knows how that will turn out.  No sense me being a witness to it.