And what's the deal with dinner parties?

Dinner parties: a tradition unlike any other. Or the other.

Without trying to be Seinfeldian, I do wonder what the deal is with dinner parties. Sure, it's a great excuse to bring people over that 1) don't live in the neighborhood, 2) show off some culinary mastery and 3) yet another excuse to overeat...as if we don't have enough of those excuses lying around. But why in the hell would we (the collective I) need a reason to wash four times as many dishes as we usually do for one orchestral event?

I will contend that there is a nature versus nurture element to the reason behind dinner parties. The nature part is personified beautifully by The Lovely. The nurture part is clumsily portrayed by me. I always love a showdown especially since we won't have pro football this year.

The Lovely, as not to be her fault, was born into a social construct that always--ALWAYS--had a reason to party. Whether it be professional, family or the gray parts in between, her parent's house was ground-zero for any event you can imagine, except circuses. The Lovely's mom prepared all the food for nearly every event that was held at the homestead (save for the 30-35 party and our wedding, she was the cook).

On a recent trip back to Corpus, we scanned through volumes of cook books to find various softball dishes we could prepare without too much hassle. While scanning these cook books, The Lovely's mom had detailed, specific notes in the back of every cook book used and annotated dishes prepared and attempted, volume of ingredients and people hosted for every categorized party executed for the purpose of historical context .

For example [paraphrased]:
Uncle Joe's birthday
Invited: 100, attended: 94
Korean Steak x 7
No vegetarians
Dessert - cream pie, needed 4 gallons extra milk

The detail of these notes were astounding, like she was studying for med school and needed to know immediately where the insertion point of the latissimus dorsi was. It was as if Mom's innate skills and savvy was easily transferred to a double-helix of The Lovely's DNA. So, for The Lovely, it was in her nature to throw dinner parties.

I, on the other hand, needed to be trained for this like some rescued mutt from the animal shelter. I no longer mess on the rug, thankyouverymuch. Aside from the random birthday party I was rarely invited to, possibly because I messed up so many rugs, my learned sensibilities with dinner parties started just like it started with a lot of kids...at lunch time.

Granted, Styrofoam trays are not the wedding-gifted china and haphazardly-opened 1/2 pint milk cartons are not the glassware. However, you have to crawl before you can walk. Hell, you have to faceplant a couple of times before crawling is a viable option. You have to learn to sit still and enjoy pleasantries, like "I love pizza day" and "math is hard". But you learn that eating and sitting with people is not mutually exclusive. Later on in junior high and high school, the conversation [somewhat] evolves to where...hey, I like having discussions with people I [somewhat] chose to hang out with while eating food I normally don't eat! Victory. Somewhat.

Let's face it, I like dinner parties so I can hang out with people. The Lovely likes dinner parties because she wants to show off how kick-ass her ninja skills in the kitchen are. And just like a dinner party, we don't do this every day. So, we add a couple of bottles of wine, extend the serving time another two hours and go from there. It's in her nature and my nurture to have a party involving dinner every once in a while.

And now, just like The Lovely's parents, we seem to have a rotation going. Just as long as I don't backslide in to trading someone's side dish for double dessert, I think I will have the decorum down. Because I am still learning, you know.

Lessons Learned, my three things.
1) So, you have to have more of an athletic stance over the ball to where your hands will be directly over your chin. When your back is straight, you can rotate your shoulders naturally to where the weight of your body is balanced on the follow through. Then the ball will naturally straighten.
2) Gas prices will stay high until they are off the commodities market. No speculators, no problem.
3) So, the orange-infused vodka needed another day or so. Formula number 2 is not a total fail, it's just weaker in flavor than I imagined.

Well, April is quickly ending, just like the scenic views at PK Lake (ooh, too soon?). But there is one more cool thing that happens in April...The Draft...no, the other The Draft. Talk later.

Thank God, it's baseball season

Roman is ready. I am ready. Red is ready to taste orange Gatorade for the first time. (from Aug 2010)

I'll admit. I was not and never have been a part of the Communist party. I have also never been a life-long, gung-ho baseball fan.

As most brainwashing--err--fandom starts, it starts young. My youth was introduced to baseball as many 6-10 year-olds trot onto a little league field. But my distaste started when I was positioned in right field. Now, if you are playing any outfield position on the 5-6 year-old team, that basically means you have zero hand-eye coordination to prevent a baseball from hitting you in the face. If there was a baseball card for my stats, it would include zero errors (due to zero balls driven past the infield dirt) and a few HBP from other dads (during coach-pitch ball). I better served the team and the league pulling weeds from the outfield. Hey, keeping up those fields was a team effort.

I stuck it out for two years, if you can call it that. It's wasn't my finest hour quitting "the great game". But it just wasn't my bag. I was going to take my talents to PE and score a Presidential Physical Education award by being a prepubescent gym rat (amazing that it's still around today). Two days a week of dodge ball, two days a week of some goofy volleyball hybrid that wasn't volleyball and one mean game of wall ball a week with pull-ups, push-ups and wind sprints in between. So, I was essentially giving an underdeveloped middle finger to baseball.

So, aside from stealing glances at my older brother's and younger brother's baseball card collection, I had a limited engagement with baseball aside from the annual "hey, you wanna go to an Astros game?" conundrum. Pre-strike, it wasn't so bad when they played at the Astrodome. But later, well after the strike, it was a beating to drive to "downtown" Houston to watch lethargic NL Central baseball. Also, they play in a venue with the dimensions of a little league field, with a "berm" in center field. Ha! Enron Field.

So, to recap, the high school and college time frame was nearly absent of any baseball conscientiousness. Which is sad.

Then, I roll up into Dallas. If there is one thing Dallas is starved for is a champion in the 00's. The town was spoiled in the early nineties with the Cowboys as all of the teams got better and better. The Stars won the friggin' Cup in '99 while half the fans didn't know what a blue line was. Hell, even the Mavericks showed up as a NBA team of reckoning. Then there were the Rangers...the lowly, lowly Rangers.

They are still paying ARod (he was still a financial consideration during the sale of the Rangers in 2010). They had a dysfunctional series of owners and team management that somehow looked better after they ruined a baseball team. It was literally an ugly stepchild that was stowed away in the back upstairs bedroom when dinner guests arrived. During the Hicks stewardship, there were Dallasites disowning the Rangers like a daughter marrying the wrong guy.

But then something happened...to me and to the fine folks of North Texas (and likewise the remote Ranger fans that have been long suffering). The Rangers started winning. Within all of the turmoil of the team sale and the skeletons in the closet coming out, the Rangers were playing solid baseball under the radar. Their June and July of the 2010 season was so torrid, they locked up the division as early as in previous years they were eliminated from any playoff contention. The DFW area was talking about significant baseball in August as opposed to following the circus of Cowboy training camp. It was a complete mental shift that no one was prepared for but was totally prepared for.

And I was sucked in. I was caught in the vacuum of awesomeness that reignited the reason why I wanted to play little league baseball in the first place...because baseball is exactly what you need when you need it.

I wanted to be part of a new town. I needed a common thread. A baseball team that had absolutely nothing to lose brought a town and a region together every damn day they took the field. Downtown was a hub with the traveling fans and the hometown revelry that brought everyone together, including me. I fell in love with the story. It was a rag-tag bunch with a survivor of addiction, a statesman of the game, a kid primed for greatness and a traveler that showed up at the right time. They were all meshed with a modern-day zen master that isn't the perfect zen master, but a zen master of the passion that found him.

C'mon, at that point, who wouldn't fall in love.

So, the Rangers are back. The configuration and the love affair might be different and matured, but it's still there. And just like I needed it to facilitate the geo-social identity, I need it again today. My mind is everywhere. This has been one hell of a month and a more-intense past two weeks. Sometimes you need to see how an inning is built or falls apart to get away from things that are falling and constructing in your life. Sometimes watching the challenge of pitcher and batter puts your challenges in perspective. Sometimes you need a break. And as much complaining there is of the 162-game schedule, for my mental and physical health, I am certainly glad it is there. To boot, it's another cool thing Dad and I can talk about. So, the love affair is back. And it doesn't matter about balls and strikes, it's about the escape that is sometimes desperately needed.

So, go Rangers. Yay, baseball. And Yankees suck. Welcome back, past time.

Lessons Learned, my three things.
1) So, that's how it happened, huh? Okay, then.
2) That's a pretty creative name, Longhorn Network. Did you think of it 15 seconds ago?
3) If you don't know how to convert your time zone from GMT, "I bid you no points and may God have mercy on your soul".

So, now that one fixture has been re-established, there seems to be a new-coming fixture that is close to installation. More on that next week. Until then, talk later.