Pirates 10-Astros 7-Kids 0

Mark had the brilliant idea of going to a baseball game this evening. Undeterred by the monsoon-like rain of the afternoon, we planned to have a picnic dinner of hot dogs and saurkraut, bike downtown to pick up some peanuts at Nicholas, and then head over to get our Buy-One-Get-One tickets. But as I was preparing our (vegetarian) dogs, I discovered they had an interesting moldy growth on them. This was disappointing, since we are always looking for ways to consume our homemade saurkraut. Also, yesterday, M had baked bread in the shape of hot dog rolls for the express purpose of eating these hot dogs. No matter, I headed down to meet M at his office. But when I got there, I realized that I had left the coupon for the tickets at home. This was very bad because we had only a limited time to get to Nicholas before they closed. And, oddly, it is very difficult to get good, unsalted peanuts at the ballpark. To save time, we split up. Back to Bloomfield I went to pick up the coupon, and M biked downtown via the Panther Hollow trail and got those peanuts just in time. Then there was the matter of dinner. We settled on Primanti Brothers where there is exactly one vegan item, the Garden Patch Salad. This is basically iceberg lettuce with french fries on top. I know, not the most nutritious, but we had all those peanuts for protein.

Finally we made it to the game. There were some, err, enthusiastic, youths sitting behind us. Sometimes shouting is good, especially in the upper decks, but they were shouting things like "Let's go Pens!", which apparently bothered somebody, and it was soon revealed that they had smuggled in some Natty Ice. They were quickly escorted away by security. Since they never returned to their seats, I assume somebody called their moms. Or took them to jail. I have to wonder, kids, was it worth it to have a can of watery beer?

After that, we settled in for some action packed baseball. The headline on the Pirates website pretty much describes the game, "Pirates seize slugfest from Astros!". After all that sitting, it was nice to bike home in the cool, evening air.