What an awful weekend....sort of....

It was not the best of weekends for me. Granted, there was a highlight of dinner with LL at Adesso (the Italian byob around the corner from me) and some good TV watching with her as well. Unfortunately, the time with LL was in the minority. Maybe I should work on changing that circumstance!

The majority of my time was spent on the softball field where our team (playing mostly against competition a level above us), went 0-4 in two tournaments. For my part, I did not hit well and had a chance to win a game on Sunday, but didn't come through. Crap.

As if that wasn't bad enough, after our first loss on Sunday, my car wouldn't start. Every time I stopped the car, it wouldn't start up again without a jump. Fortunately some gents on the team, pictured below, followed me home from Crystal Lake (over an hour away) until I got to Lawrence Avenue, the exit to get to my mechanic. At the top of the ramp, where I had to stop for the light, the car died again. Great. Most of Chicago was behind me on the ramp. Ugh.

Fortunately, a guy two cars back had a tow line and towed my car about 5o yards to a gas station. He was really just a nice guy looking to help someone out. A true good Samaritan. I gave him my business card and told him to call me because I want to send him something as a thank you (he didn't have a card).



Tim, JC and Sausage (right to left) helped push my car into the spot at the gas station and they were the teammates who followed me home to make sure I didn't have any car trouble. They also doubled back to help me out after I had sent them home from the highway thinking I was able to make it the rest of the way without any trouble. Doh! Thanks guys!!! Lovely Laura then drove me back and forth from the mechanic to the gas station, back to the mechanic and then home (oh, and one more trip to the mechanic since I forgot to drop off a key!). Thank you LL!!







So it was a pretty crappy weekend. However, it could have been much worse. While I hit like crap, I did get one hit on Saturday that kept the game from ending early. And I did make some decent plays on defense, but it wasn't a good softball weekend by any stretch. The team didn't get blown out either. Most of the games were pretty close into the late innings and one went into extra innings.

But it could have been much worse for me with the car too. Any of the four times I jumped the car could have failed and I could have been stuck in Crystal Lake. The car could have lost power while on the highway. The power could have cut just a little bit shorter on the ramp and I'm sue I would have hit another car as I rolled backwards down the steep sloping ramp before I could get the brakes (power brakes) to actually engage. Not to mention the good Samaritan who helped me tow my car could have been just another disinterested and annoyed observer. My tammates could have not been there to help. I could have already used my four service calls from AAA a year that I get, but fortunately, this was the fourth (the event in the Keys counted as two I think). And I'm fortunate to know a mechanic with whom I can drop off the car and whom I trust to make repairs.

So yeah, the weekend kind of sucked, but it could have been much worse.