I finally had some time off this past week, so you know what that means: CHICAGO! Yes, we already covered that ground earlier this year . . . but that was during hockey season. Now it’s time for some BASEBALL!
We were only in the Midwest for a slightly extended holiday (Kamehameha Day) weekend, which meant only three full days. Somehow, those included two baseball games, both involving the Milwaukee Brewers. Todd and I had already done a Miller Park tour with our friends Kathleen and Jim back when Jim was working in Wisconsin, but we’d never seen a game there, and in all honesty, I was just dying to see the legendary Sausage Race. When I found out that the Brewers were going to be playing the Cardinals at Miller Park the weekend we were planning to be in Chicago, I knew it was destiny: We had to go. Of course, our friends Leesa and Scott offered to drive and make it happen.
Todd and me in the Miller Park bleachers before the game.
Sausage Race! So. Awesome.
So was the Sausage Race all it was cracked up to be? YOU BET. Plus, because it was “Sausage Sunday” (that’s what she said . . . really, that is what the girl at the Meat Locker — not kidding — said), all souvenirs having to do with the Sausage Race were 10% off at the gift shop! I mighta kinda gone bananas purchasing omiyage and souvenirs for myself (including a pair of Chorizo earrings and a stuffed Chorizo doll), but what a bargain! Plus, who else is gonna bring home Sausage Race gifts, right?
Totally weird: Because Chorizo is my favorite of the Sausage Race dudes and I bought mostly stuff with him on it, the cashier seemed to assume that I was Mexican and made a sympathetic remark about me having missed Cerveceros Day by one day. Do I need to start taping my eyelids or what!
The next day was another Brewers game, but this time, it was the Brewers vs. my Cubbies at our “home” stadium, Wrigley Field. Todd and I have had a paver at Wrigley since the brick program started in 2007. The Cubs keep moving it around as they do renovations at the ballpark, but we managed to find it again this season:
The brick! Yay!
And, of course, we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves at the game.
The iconic Wrigley Field scoreboard.
Not a better place in the world to watch a ball game.
My favorite Cub, Ryan Dempster, was the starting pitcher!
By enjoying ourselves, I mean there was some serious whooping and screaming going on. OK, so maybe only I was yelling . . . which would explain why I was a little hoarse afterward. What can you do. And hey, maybe it worked: After all, Cubs did snap their gazillion-game losing streak and take the first of three games they would eventually win in the series against the Brewers. Now they’re no longer in last place in the National League Central!
Oh, how I do love a Cubs game. Even when they’re losing, even when they’re on rain delay, there’s nothing quite like it.
The weather, by the way, was superb: 60s and 70s with wind chills in the 50s and 60s. I loved every minute. When the fog cleared away, you really couldn’t beat the view . . .
The Chicago River, as viewed from the Michigan Avenue bridge.
. . . and, of course, it’s hard to beat Chicago food:
Mochomos (crunchy threads of grass-fed beef brisket), Topolobampo.
Borrego en Mole Negro (lamb leg w/Rick Bayless’ prize-winning Oaxacan molé), Topolobampo.
The Mastodon, Kuma’s Corner (most Yelped restaurant in Chicago).
Portillo’s cheese fries: They may not look like much, but they are the best cheese fries out!
Ahh, Chicago. I miss you already. When’s our next adventure?
Well, the supposed rapture of 2011 has come and gone, and surprise, surprise, we’re all still here. So, in case you were wondering, here’s what the Bible really says about the end of the world:
Heaven and earth will disappear, but my words will never disappear. However, no one knows the day or hour when these things will happen, not even the angels in heaven or the Son himself. Only the Father knows.
- Matthew 24:35-36 (NLT) (Read the whole chapter here.)
Maybe I should’ve posted that before today. Hmm, oh, well.
What did I do this weekend? Oh, just, you know . . . jump out of a plane:
Thanks to Pedro, Liana and Todd for jumping along – mostly to Pedro for coming up with the idea! =)
In case you’re wondering: SUPER fun, but also VERY loud. I think my ears just stopped hurting! But it was definitely a worthwhile way to spend a Sunday.
Uhh, so . . . sorry if you’ve been trying to get here but have been getting shut down by that silly “Error establishing a database connection” message. I was working on a side project and changed the passwords to my MySQL databases and then promptly forgot to update the config file for this blog. I guess that’s been going on for a few days. This is the kind of trouble I get into when neither baseball nor hockey is on. Apparently, I should just tie my hands behind my back.
Things have been going relatively OK lately. The most horrendous thing that has happened as of late is a humongous roach somehow drowning in 2mm of water in my Starbucks Chicago coffee mug. [Click here if you want to see a pic of the "victim."] Several friends insisted that I can the autoclave idea (which, while I probably could have gotten it done, was not really going to happen anyway) and let the mug live the rest of its unnatural life in a landfill. But I grew up in Palolo Valley, dagnabbit, and heck if I’m gonna let one roach do me in. It’s called dishwashing soap and hot water, people.
See? Still using it, and I’m not dead yet.
But mostly, things have been really good. Thank you, God, for giving me a break. We’ve started going to Friday night services at church, which not only gives us an opportunity to sleep in on Sunday, it also means we get to hang out with Keao and Casey! Since Keao went back to work, we hadn’t been able to see the two of them at Sunday morning services.
Look how big Miss Casey is getting! Hard to believe she’s 9.5 months old already. I took this pic yesterday. We love Casey! She smiles and laughs all the time but is usually moving around so much, it’s hard to shoot in low light. Good thing she was kinda zonked last night. Random people ask me about Casey all the time, so I figure some of you must be wondering how she is doing. As you can see, she is awesome.
Oh, and I got new art for my office:
Sure, it’s stuck up on the frame between windows by six pieces of blue painter’s tape . . . but whatever. Hockey season may be over for the Blackhawks, but, like baseball season, it never has to end in my head.
A week from Sunday, my friends Pedro, Liana and I are going skydiving. It will be the first time for each of us. Skydiving is something I’ve always joked that I want to do as part of my bucket list (I really hate that term, but I know that even if I didn’t say it, you’d be thinking it), but I had never made any solid plans to do it. It’s not that I didn’t really intend to do it – it’s more the case that I had other things I wanted to do first, like see “Les Mis” as many times as the opportunity would present itself, watch my Cubbies fail to make the Series (every year), go to hockey games . . . Pure and simple, it just wasn’t high on my priority list.
But then a couple of weeks ago, Pedro wondered aloud on his Facebook wall whether any of his friends would be interested in going skydiving to celebrate his birthday in mid-May. I threw my hat in right away, and I thought that for sure a whole bunch of Pedro’s other friends would be jumping at the chance, and I’d probably have to wait for another opportunity because there would just be too many people.
As it turns out, I couldn’t have been more wrong. NO ONE else wanted to do it. No one. (Yeah, Liana is coming, but she’s actually my friend, not Pedro’s – yet.)
Now, I don’t know the first thing about skydiving. I have, of course, heard people make off-the-cuff remarks like how it’s pretty much all about jumping out of a “perfectly good plane.” I think a parachute is involved. I’ve seen pictures here and there. But other than that, I know nothing. When Pedro mentioned that he wanted to do the “high altitude tandem,” I had to look on the skydive company’s website to see what that meant. Apparently, it means that you get at least one whole minute of freefall.
“Freefall?” I asked Todd. “Do they mean like a whole minute before you even whip out the parachute?”
Todd said yes.
Now, my stunted media exposure (which, let’s face it, comes from Bugs Bunny cartoons) tells me that if you happen to be outside a plane, in the sky, and don’t have a parachute open, you have only fractions of a second before gravity yanks you down and you disappear into a poof of smoke at the bottom of some canyon. I’m sure that’s not how it actually goes, but I don’t know what it’s really like AT ALL. I have no concept of it. None! And I feel like reading someone’s description of it would somehow cheapen the experience for me or make me have unrealistic expectations, so I refuse to do that in advance.
But the weirdest part about all this is, I’m not scared at all. I didn’t think that was odd until I started asking other people whether they wanted to go, and their eyes bugged out and they squawked at me like I was completely out of my mind. Pedro keeps mentioning how freaked out he is about it, though he’s kind of doing it to get over the freaking-out. Is it just because I don’t know enough to be scared? It’s definitely not that I’m “fearless.” Will the fear kick in at some point? Thoughts?
Hahaha, I love this picture so much, I had to blog it. May Rose, Tina and I had lunch today, and let’s just say Tina was the only one who didn’t have a purple purse. Love, love, love this shot, especially since I’m all “cancer nerd” (MR’s term), with the NCI clinical trials pamphlets in my other hand.
In other news . . . The Cubs beat the Dodgers today. Guess who got credited with the win? KERRY WOOD. That’s right. Told y’all he’d be a good re-investment. So he’s 1-1. It’s early in the season yet! Eamus catuli!
The Blackhawks lost Game 7 in OT, despite Corey Crawford’s heroics (his name was trending WORLDWIDE on Twitter) and Jonathan Toews’ awesome shorthanded goal in Period 3. Today’s Cubs game was postponed on behalf of rain that had not even fallen yet.
I thought I would keep with the recent theme of morbidity/mortality that seems to have overtaken this blog lately, yet keep it light by at least being a little less agro than yesterday. I’ve been meaning to get the word out about this topic for a while, ever since it came to my attention that people think I’m joking when I talk about what I want to happen after I die. The way I see it, if I let enough people know, someone will hold my next of kin accountable. So here’s how it’s gonna go, regardless of whether I die today or when I’m 90:
“A Dying Cub Fan’s Last Request”: Yes, I actually want this song played at my funeral. This is my biggest request. The lyrics are totally morbid, but they’re also funny, and this is one of my favorite songs in the whole world. Here’s the artist, Steve Goodman, performing it a while ago. I’d say use the video, but it really doesn’t get any better than this. They can’t update it because he died of cancer when he was 36. So skip the video for the service itself, there’s plenty of good audio of it. The mp3 is on my hard drive and my iPhone and will surely be available on whatever audio device and computer I own at the time of my passing.
Note: This song is to be played regardless of whether it is still true that, as the lyrics state, “the last time the Cubs won the National League penant/was the year we dropped the bomb on Japan.” Don’t worry, it will probably still be true anyway, regardless of when I die, seeing as how ownership refuses to fire Jim Hendry EVER. He will run the club into the ground from his grave. Thus, I will still rant about it from mine.
Other music (i.e., during visitation): Billy Joel is preferable, The Beatles are OK. Yes, the instrumental Billy Joel CD we used during seating at my wedding will work just fine. But please, no classical music. I hate that stuff. Gershwin is OK, but only “Rhapsody in Blue” and “An American in Paris.” I have a CD . . . somewhere. It’s also on my iPhone. I’d say show tunes would be all right, but you people always think I like the weirdest things, and your selections may not be good. Some things are best not left to chance.
Funeral food: Please don’t order from Ige’s or Marian’s or anything like that. I hate that stuff, especially the greasy noodles and fried chicken. But do get chi chi dango mochi from Nisshodo’s or whoever does that kind of thing when I go. We need to bring that particular tradition back. Nothin’ like paper-wrapped rice treats at a funeral.
Ashes: Yes, I want to be cremated. Please. There is only so much space on this planet for burials, and goodness knows I don’t want the discovery of my bones somewhere bringing a halt to some massive Whole Foods construction project decades from now. I want some of my ashes scattered at Wrigley Field. I am not kidding. It’s technically not allowed, of course, but it can be done. Don’t be stupid and try to scatter them all, as that would be a bit obvious. I’m just talking about a little bit. I don’t even care how much. It’s just something I want done. Is that selfish? Sure. But what the heck. It’s Chicago, it’s windy, I won’t be there for long. Then do whatever the heck you want with the rest of my ashes. Inter them if you wish, scatter them wherever if not. But if you’re gonna scatter ‘em, don’t get caught and blame me for your problems.
I think that’s about it. I’ve really thought these things through over the past few years, and I will try to keep this list updated if my tastes change or I come across something else I’d like to add. But I think I’ve been pretty reasonable and set enough of a tone where if a migraine makes my brain explode tomorrow, nobody will be left floundering and wondering what the heck I “would have wanted.” It’s all right there. My mother will probably say that I am a sick person for having posted this, but she has really heard all of it before (OK, maybe not the part about the ashes at Wrigley, but you had to know that was coming). And now, so have you.
OK, I promise to get back to a lighter subject after the Stanley Cup quarterfinals. I miss my friends every day, but I am pretty sure they wouldn’t want me to be unhappy during baseball season. ;o)
All right, I’m just gonna say it. While I know some people are totally going to take this the wrong way, I’m gonna say it anyway, because it has really been weighing on my mind for a while now:
Some people get sick or injured and get better. Some people even get really, really sick or suffer from terrible injuries of some sort – shootings, even – and they get better. It’s amazing. It’s a miracle. You know it happens, I know it happens. And it’s not that I don’t want people to get better; in fact, the reasonable side of me would like nothing more than for cancer to become a set of diseases from which no one ever dies ever again. It’s just, people with cancer get better every day. Why couldn’t Troy, Courtney and Ty get better? Why did MY COUSIN and MY FRIENDS have to die? And why did it have to suck so much for them and for their families? They weren’t even in the “high risk” group for cancer: Anyone who works in the cancer field will tell you that the number one risk factor for a cancer diagnosis (never mind death) is age, but none of these people lived to be a day over 34.
I’m just putting it out there because it just nags at me every single time I hear about somebody getting better. It’s not that I want people not to get better. It’s not that I don’t want to hear about it when they get better, either. It’s just, really, every time I hear a story about somebody going into remission or responding well to treatment, I feel physically sick and the tears sting in my eyes, and I’m angry with God and medical science and the whole world all over again that my friends couldn’t be saved. And it’s just all compounded by the guilt I feel for feeling that way. It’s unreasonable, I know, but I can’t make the feeling go away.
Most of the time, I am OK, if not more than OK. When the Blackhawks are winning, I am crazy happy. When the Cubs are winning, well, I know it can turn around on a dime, so I try not to get too happy about it, but I have been known to do a fist pump or two when they can at least manage to get the small ball right. Plus, I am pretty easily entertained in general. But all it takes is somebody’s happy story about overcoming cancer, and I’m mad all over again. And I know it’s ridiculous. I know. But I don’t know what to do about it. So please, if you have any ideas . . .
Ty and Marcia at Eddie George’s Grille 27, July 2008.
Cancer robbed the world of another really awesome person this past weekend as my dear friend Ty Wakefield succumbed to the osteosarcoma that had been causing him so much pain for the past four years.
Even though he went through seemingly endless treatments that robbed him of his hair and put an enormous strain on his finances, Ty never, EVER gave in to cancer. He received his diagnosis and immediately took up the fight with the LIVESTRONG movement, determined to make life better not only for himself, but for the countless others affected by cancer. He fought to raise awareness for osteosarcoma, a little known – but obviously, deadly – disease. He wrote and provided the art for two Captain Cure comic books, to “help children understand chemotherapy and the fight against cancer,” to empower them so they wouldn’t be afraid.
In June 2009, Ty wrote to some of his friends to update us on his battle with cancer and the options with which his doctors had presented him.
“I want to be honest,” he wrote. “I don’t know what option I will take. I just want to live no matter how long or short it is. I don’t want to hurt, and I don’t want to be sick for whatever’s left. I’m hurting from this news, and to be honest my hope is lost, actually misplaced, I know that it’s dark now, but I could never totally lose my hope.”
Like our mutual friend Courtney, Ty fought cancer with such humor and dignity, you would never know how sick he was from what he let you see. Sometimes Ty’s online self was so peppy, it was hard to keep up with what was going on, other than through alternate channels (e.g., Marcia). When Ty was angry with cancer, he would sometimes express it, but other times, he tried to maintain a positive front and was reluctant to share any bad news unless you specifically asked. I was going through some old e-mails and was surprised to note that just 13 months ago, he and I had talked about him being “cancer free” for 6 months at the time – even though he had to cut his message to me short because he had to receive what I presume was a chemo drip.
I wish Ty and I had had more time to talk about things other than cancer. I wish we’d joked about more than hospitals and clean CT scans (“What are those?” laughed Ty.). But cancer robbed us of those opportunities. And that’s just selfish me talking. Ty leaves behind a doting wife, Angie, and three beautiful little girls. Cancer has robbed them all of so much.
I apologize that this blog entry is so incoherent and disjointed. It’s so hard to write about a friend dying. As Marcia so eloquently expressed earlier, even though you know what’s coming, it doesn’t make it easier to process the feelings once it actually happens. I know that the tributes and messages being posted now to Ty’s Facebook wall and via e-mail cannot erase the pain that accompanies his passing, but hopefully they will help Angie and the girls to remember the good times, to see what a real superhero Ty really was – the fictional Captain Cure had nothing on this real-life hero.
