My brother Jon and his wife were in Santa Barbara visiting this weekend. A lot of what we did while they were here was shopping. Saturday, we walked around State Street here, and they twisted my arm into buying a bunch of clothes. From there, we drove down to the outlet stores in Camarillo. In addition to more clothes, I ended up buying something else there. I’ve read a bunch of people rave about the Bose Quiet Comfort 3 noise canceling headphones, but hadn’t had a chance to try them. Bose had a store in the outlet mall. I went in and tried them twice. I checked Amazon on my phone to see if I could save shipping and tax. Nope, Amazon only has them through Bose as a partner. So I bought them, factory renewed for $50 cheaper. They’re incredible. The real test will be later this week when I fly to New York.

Every Sunday in Santa Barbara, there’s an arts and crafts show along the street by the beach. I usually go whenever I have people visiting. It’s a nice way to spend a few hours. I’ve bought a few things there before, but usually nothing terribly big or expensive. This time I saw a painting that I had to have, and knew it would go perfectly on a wall in my house. The artist wasn’t around his area the first time I saw it. He still wasn’t there when we walked back by it again after lunch, and I figured it would be a lot more money than I wanted to spend, so we eventually kept walking. About 20 minutes later, I decided I had to go back and find him, so we did. It ended up being about 1/3 to 1/2 the price I thought it would be, so I bought it. I’m glad I did.

I couldn’t get it home in my car, so the artist drove it by yesterday morning.

Tonight, bowling. Thursday, off to NY.

Is it bad that I’m really looking forward to leaving work at around 2:20 today……. to go to the dentist?

Saturday afternoon, Alex Rodriguez hit a three-run homer in his first at-bat, to become the youngest player ever to hit 500 home runs. That night, Barry Bonds hit a solo homer in his first time at the plate, to tie Hank Aaron with for the all-time lead with 755. In between those two home runs, I went to a Mets game in Chicago, with Russ.

There was nothing particularly special about that game. It was my first time at Wrigley Field, and we had some pretty good seats (view here). John Maine breezed through the first two innings, before giving up 6 runs in the third. The Mets were only able to score 2 runs off of Ted Lilly, both on Moises Alou solo homers. It was a fun game, but disappointing.

Sunday, though, was a different story. I went to the game with Matt, who has season tickets. Tom Glavine was the starter for the Mets, making his second attempt at getting win #300. I had been planning this trip since the season schedule came out, but I realized when he was at 297 wins that I’d have a decent shot to see him go for 300. In his last try, last Tuesday, he left the game with a 2-1 lead, only to have Guillermo Mota blow it in the 8th (and the Mets lose in extra innings). Sunday, Glavine pitched great, giving up 2 runs in 6 1/3 innings, and also drove in the first run of the game with an RBI single. He’d finish 1-2 with a walk and a sac bunt. He left the game with a 5-1 lead, and saw it get to 5-3 before the 7th inning ended. It took three relievers (Mota, Feliciano, Heilman) to finally get out of the inning, but Glavine’s lead was intact. The Mets added 2 in the 8th, and 1 in the 9th, and Jorge Sosa and Billy Wagner both pitched a scoreless inning to close it out, for a final score of 8-3, and Glavine’s 300th win!

I decided at the start of the game that I’d keep score to have a nice souvenir if the game did end up being his 300th. Our seats were good, but I wouldn’t have been able to do much good photography from where they were anyway. The cable holding up the screen would have been in the way of a lot of it, and they weren’t terribly close (view from seats here). I haven’t kept score at a game since Game 5 of the 2003 ALDS in Oakland. I was a little rusty to start, but got back into it pretty well, and managed to keep at it the whole game. I need to do it more often. It’s a lot of fun, and keeps me really focused on the game. Click the image to see the scorecard bigger.