Hangovers and garbage collection (Day 33)

Picking up garbage is the best thing for a hangover.

No wait, it's not.

Carl and I headed to the field in the morning slightly later than we said we would, though it didn't really matter because we were the only ones there. I'd gotten the keys from Whitey the night before so we didn't have to make someone else let us in. When we did manage to make it there, we were both feeling pretty lazy. I think we sat around on the couch in the locker room for a good amount of time before we did anything. Whitey had called just as we arrived and said he was going to stop by though, so it gave us a little bit of an excuse to sit there while we waited for him.

I'm not really sure what the point of him coming was. He asked if we needed anything but we didn't, except maybe to feel better than we did, but Whitey couldn't help with that. So we sat around some more, chatting, but probably not about much since we'd all been together just a few hours before. Whitey didn't stay that long though and when he left, Carl and I figured that we should actually try and get some work done.

We put in a team effort, going to the same sections of seats and picking up the trash together. It wasn't the most efficient plan we've ever had, considering we were going different directions and missing parts at first. But we got the first area done and decided to take five. There were a few breaks inbetween the working. The job probably could have been done much faster had we been motivated or had some sort of time limit.

During the breaks we headed into the locker room and played ping pong or cards. There aren't that many card games that we knew that worked for only two people, but after we played War a few times, Carl taught me a new one. It's called Spit and it is definitely a solid two-man game. It's name is not reflective of anything that goes on during the game, just in case you're wondering. At first Carl was trying to be nice about his effort in the game but eventually I got better, maybe even good, and he wasn't happy about it. That game ended before there was an official winner.

We played some more ping pong after we were finished garbage-collecting, because Whitey was coming back to pick us up. It had started pouring rain as soon as we got the last bags in the dumpster, so we headed to the locker room one last time for the day. Ping pong didn't go well becuase Carl was trying to get me to play an official game and I refused because I'm just not that good yet. And I'm a worse loser than he is so there's no need for us to get into that. Eventually Whitey came and saved us from ourselves.

I took a ride home and by that time I was pretty hungry. The fact that Erin was cooking when I got home didn't do anything to help my hunger. She told me she was making a fritatta, but I wasn't sure if she shared that information because she was going to share the food with me or not, so I had a banana and put some bread in the toaster. After I'd finished eating that, she cut me a slice of the now-finished fritatta. Lucky for me, peanut butter on toast and a banana aren't incredibly filling and I had two slices of the eggy wonder that she had put together.

Erin also mentioned that after making and eating the fritatta, she was going to make crackles. I obviously asked what crackles are and she said they're basically just chocolate and Rice Bubbles. So I then of course asked what Rice Bubbles are. Seriously, it's a whole other language over here. And I learned that Rice Bubbles are the Australian version of Rice Krispies. And by version, I mean they are exactly the same thing but they have a different, confusing name.

When Erin set to work on that I definitely fell asleep for the majority of the afternoon. The hangover and garbage pickup had tuckered me out. I didn't feel much better when I woke up hours later though, which is what I was hoping would happen. So I mostly stayed in bed answering emails, creeping Facebook and wishing I hadn't lent The Sandlot to Carl so I could have been watching it.

At one point I thought I would try to be useful by doing my laundry. I must have messed something up though because when the washer stopped my clothes were still soapy. I had to run it again. Obviously me trying to make myself useful wasn't extremely efficient. So I definitely went back to laying around in bed and trying to sleep after that.

The next time I got up I downloaded one of the players' walkup songs because I think it's great. It's My Life Be Like (Ooh Aah) by Grits, and it's Josh Roberts' walkup music. It's perfect for its purpose. So I added that one to the iPod. Before I know it, I'll have more walkup songs on my iPod than anything else. But really, who needs anything else?

I got a little bit of writing done and received answers to a set of interview questions I'd sent out previously to Ryan Searle. He's a Cubs prospect and after the season this North American summer, the Cubs shut him down, so he hasn't pitched for the Bandits as of yet. But I didn't know that until after I asked him a couple times if I could just interview him at practice. Now I know that didn't make any sense since he wasn't practicing with the team. Oops. He'll be around at this week's practice though (after he's already answered my questions) and he will start pitching for Brisbane next weekend against Adelaide I think.

My night ended with a very long Carl phone call. I think I had called to ask him something earlier but he didn't pick up. He called me back when he was walking home on a very long journey from somewhere and pretty much wanted me to talk him through his walk. He kept asking me to tell him stories, and so that's what I did.

If you've never met me, you should know that I could probably talk all day every day and never run out of things to say. It might be evident by the amount of words I can write about one single day here, each and every day, but just in case you didn't catch that, I'm a talker.

I am also a very curious person, so I constantly have millions of questions about everything. It helps with the whole journalism thing. I hope.