Long/short weekend

Have you had those weekends that seemed both long and short? The GF and I headed down to Troy Illinois, about a five hour drive, for a softball tournament. We left on Friday about midday and stopped in Joliet to have lunch with her folks. Then drove the rest of the way and made an early, restful evening of it.

We woke up on Saturday to a whole bunch of rain and a two hour rain delay to the start of the tournament. We were supposed to start at 11, but didn't get started until closer to 1. The one day tournament was now a one and a half day tournament.

Unfortunately we had another bad luck of the draw and played first the team which I think ended up winning it all (they were 4-0 on Saturday and blew people away). We won the next three games with only minimal breaks after our second game of the day and lost our last game around 10:30 at night to a team from Troy who plays on the (rather poorly lit) fields every week. It was a long day for 5 games. It got pretty warm and humid in the afternoon, at by the end of the day I was pretty tired. In my last two games I was 2-8 after a reasonably decent start to the day. By the end of the day, I was probably close to .500, which for me with this style of pitching (not what I normally play) it wasn't bad. You always expect to do better. So we went 3-2 and ended up maybe in fourth place.

***update***
Turns out I was 8 for 12 going into the last two games, pretty sweet. The second to last game, which we won, I was 0-4 and then 2-4 in the last game to go 10-20 for a .500 average. Not great, but good for a bad day, if that makes sense.

***

While I struggled offensively, I had a few nice defensive plays. On one ball smashed down the line to my backhand, I dove, gloved it, and threw the batter our from my knees. It was especially sweet as the next two plays were defensive gems by our pitcher and first baseman, so we sent them down 1-2-3 on three pretty good plays. I also started one double play and finished a second double play, which is tough to do at third.

With runners at first and second, the batter hit a slow grounder to short. The shortstop flipped it to the middle infielder who, instead of throwing it to first (where we probably weren't going to double up the batter) he threw a strike to me at third where I had just snuck in behind the runner going from second to third as he rounded the base too aggressively. I snapped the tag right on his noggin as he dove back towards the bag. Nice play!!

The GF was awesome all weekend, especially on Saturday. When we had three back-to-back games, she really helped with getting me beverages and running to the car for stuff I needed. On the way back on Sunday, we stopped in Springfield to have lunch with my college roommate Sam and his wife Diane. Their three kids were hopping all over the place too, just to keep things interesting. They were great hosts and had just had a grill out party the night before so we had plenty of leftovers. Good stuff and great to catch up!!

**Update***
The GF has a new web name!! At least until further notice or she majorly objects. Sure given that her name is Laura, an 8 year old would have come up with "Lovely Laura" some time ago, but I'm not an 8 year old and might not be smarter than one. ):^)