Some stats:
Game 1 = 234
Game 2 = 255
Game 3 = 222
22 strikes
4 spares
4 open frames
1 split
9.4 first ball average

This is the first time in a long time that I had a consistently great night. I started game 1 with 7 strikes (a new best). After the first game, I would have been happy to finish with a 600 series (I’ve only done that twice), and I never dreamed I could come close to a 700 series. My average going into tonight was a 168. I’ve said for a few weeks that it was artificially low, but I was never expecting a night like this. The 711 was enough to give me high handicap series in the league with an 849 and put me third on the list for high scratch series. I also get a spot on the Men’s Leaderboard, and I might just have to check the paper tomorrow morning.

So here we are, down to the wire on the house and I get a call from our mortgage broker. Seems the bank wants to stop offering the loan program that we locked into 90 days ago and they will only give us our rate if we close by August 15th (as opposed to the 18th originally). We don’t really have all the details because we have never dealt directly with the bank, but it was not a happy thing to find out about less than a week before the scheduled closing and a mere 2 days from the new proposed closing.

So I scrambled around for an hour trying to make arrangements for things like moving vacation days around and finding out if we’d actually be able to get a moving truck early so we could take advantage of the extra time in the house. Needless to say, we found a way to make it work and are now closing at 2pm tomorrow. It’s been a long last few days.

Now I’m off work for a week and ready to finish packing, start moving, and start enjoying the new house. I will try to come back and post more pictures and videos of the house. We still have so much work to do…

I called the police and basically learned it would be worthless for them to come out unless there was more significant damage. So we swapped insurance information and I drove home wishing Quizno’s had been open (the first choice for dinner). Obviously this was totally his fault since our car was stationary in a parking space and I wasn’t even in it. Looking back on it, though, I realized I really should have checked around to see if anyone saw what happened so they could be listed as a witness for the claim. Even though it was clearly his fault, I don’t want to get stuck paying the $500 deductible. I already called State Farm and gave them all the info for our claim, so now I get to sit back and wait for our rep to call to figure out what happens next.

Enter today with questionable weather and exactly 10 players available. It rained off and on from late morning to mid afternoon, but MSCR posted on their website that all games were still on and would play by umpire’s decision if there was more rain. So of course it started raining steadily about 6:30pm with no signs of stopping. I ate dinner, got dressed and started heading toward the field. On the way I got a text from one of my friends on the team saying there’s no way we were playing tonight. However, as I drove up to the park, the lights were on and the previous game was underway. Another guy who was already there said our game was still on. I called a few people to make sure they were still coming, and we started warming up in the steady rain.

Now the question became whether each team would have enough players. The max for the field is 10 (more can bat) and you can play with as few as 8, though it’s pretty tough. As game time drew nearer, all 10 of our guys showed up but they only had 7. Since everyone was already out there soaking wet, we didn’t really want to win via forfeit, so we sent one of our guys to their team and had a legal game.

Turns out, the field wasn’t as bad as it could have been because the infield was comprised mostly of sand. The rain actually stopped for a while during the game and when it did start again it was lighter than before. We actually played pretty solid defense for the first time all season and our offense was doing a good job of finding the holes (they played with 3 infielders and 3 outfielders). We had a big lead going into the 6th, but then they started finding the gaps as well and put up enough runs to take the lead in the top of the 7th (final inning). They were up one going into the bottom of the inning, so we needed 2 runs to win the game. Through a series of hits (including one by our slowest runner), we managed to load the bases and then pitcher walked in the tying run.

So now there’s 2 outs, bases loaded. The game is tied. Who’s up? That would be me. Cliche I know, but it’s true. I’d already had a pretty good night with a single and a double. I’d been able to pick a spot and hit it in my previous at bats, so I figured why not look for the biggest opening and see if I could hit it. Their shortstop was playing just to the left side of second and the first baseman was shaded toward second, but not far from his regular spot which left a big gap at second - bingo. Surprisingly enough, I hit the spot perfectly for a seeing eye single that brought home our slowest runner and won the game. Walk off, baby. That’s what I’m talkin’ about.

Here’s where the unfortunate part comes in. I just helped a customer go live at their last 3 hospitals, so transitioning off of their support team now would be very poor timing. We’ll call them customer A. Even though I wouldn’t mind giving them up, I can understand why they would be a poor choice to transition to someone else right now. They are nice people, but kind of a pain to work with because of their strict (read: sometimes blatantly stupid) change control process. Well, I’m stuck with them.

So that leaves 5 other customers that could potentially go to someone else but the way the team leads saw it, there was only one logical choice. Keep the customer mentioned above and the customer that takes the least amount of time. We’ll call the latter customer B. Of course customer B is my least favorite group out of all 6 of them. Needless to say, when I heard this, I wasn’t exactly thrilled. I asked if I had a choice in which customers to keep and was basically told I could keep customer B or the next closest in amount of time spent at another 2.5 hours per week. We’ll call them customer C and this group just happens to be a group I like.

So there was my only real choice in all the changes coming my way - take less time with a customer I don’t like (B), or more time with a customer I enjoy working with (C). Out of 5 transitions in my future, it didn’t seem like much of a choice. On top of that, one of the customers I haven’t mentioned yet happens to be my favorite and it seemed pretty clear I couldn’t keep them. After talking it over with Amber, I decided to go with C, suck up the time difference, and be rid of B within a month or two. The only thing that really hung me up was the idea that I’d been given the opportunity to drop my customer load as much as possible and I was considering passing it up. In the end, Amber and I decided I’d probably be happier with customer C even if it was more time consuming.

After a few days as things started to sink in I decided that this really isn’t a bad thing except for the unfortunate part about losing my favorite customer. I was already thinking some sort of change would be nice around my 3 year anniversary (next week), I just wasn’t thinking it would be this major. Most of my current customers are going to newer people, so the transitions may not be a cakewalk. Finally, there’s only 6 more days to complete the transition that kicked this all off. The next few weeks are going to be super busy, but I’m excited about what work will be like once I’m actually down to 3 customers. Time will tell.

I did some quick reading at camcorderinfo.com and played with a few cameras at Best Buy before settling on the JVC Everio GZ-MG330. It’s a hard drive camcorder that can store about 7 hours of video at the highest quality setting. It’s surprisingly small and light, so hopefully it will be easy to use. It’s not overly fancy, but it should do the job quite nicely. It came from Amazon today and I’ve spent some minimal time playing with it.

For the next several days at least we’ll probably be headed by our lot pretty much every day to take some pictures and shoot video. Assuming I can figure out how to get videos onto the computer, I’ll be putting some up on the web for all to see.

Oh yeah, I also joined twitter.

Update 5/2/2008 7:35PM: They didn’t do any digging today. It rained pretty hard this morning, maybe that caused the delay.

Anyway, the comic that finally got me to post blends together perfect references from one of my favorite games and one of my favorite childhood comic strips. How can you go wrong with Mario Kart and Calvin and Hobbes? Don’t forget to mouse over the images to read the alt text; if you’re initially confused, a lot of times this will help clear things up.