the venting

yeah, so before i fell asleep i took an accounting of the challenges and decided it was time to vent and while some of this might be too much candor (which is a private blog nobody gets to read until after we share eye contact and a whole lot more so we share an understanding of my deeper meanings, especially in my venting which are usually misinterpreted {even by jackson sometimes who knows me better than most} as much more negative than they really are... a couple of people understood along the way and i miss them... and share a private blog with on too... anyway, i hope you will allow leway and reserve judgment and try to understand the positivity in the vents and if not, oh well, nevermind... the next entry may be more fun, or at least lighter :)

ah life... it really does seem to suck sometimes... at least that is how it can feel (in spite of the most wonderful positivity, really, and seriously sarcastic self-mockery of a superior mastery even, really), really, seriously, even...

what?...

ah yes, it's the little things that make life extra special and spectacular, even, ya know?... well, the tournament sucks so far... the hotel is good, but surprisingly skimpy in basics kind of expected in a hotel that charges more than $100 a night... no fridge, no microwave, and no internet... i've had all three of those amenities in cheap motels that charge half this room rate... the beds and pillows and body comforts are excellent, but the tech and culinary features that would be needed to keep me here for more than a brief one or two night stay where i will spend next to no time actually at the hotel or in the room are totally missing... the tv is small and not superior quality and the remote works poorly... i don't even think the tv is 32 inches... the place obviously does it's best to help guests choose extra charges like for the valet parking as the self-parking is a longer walk and there is no sidewalk or path so you must walk in traffic past exhaust fumes from buses and the valet desk in order to get to the lobby and the lack of vending machines forces one to order room services if you don't want to go out for a drink or snack (and no fridge or microwave means don't bring food back to the room)... the most obvious lack of luxury quality service is the $10 charge per day (or even for three hours) for internet... ridiculous at this room rate...

but for sleeping only, the beds are great...

meanwhile, i contact ATT and find that they do not include the hot spot feature with my $230 phone plan... they want an additional $30 to turn that on... again, corporate america at work not in the average consumer's interest (and way out of reach of the poor which make up more than 47% mister almost president, thank you)... the motto the customer is always right long since died out as a business motto in this greedy country... i simply want to use a feature on the phone i paid for, to connect my phone to my computer to use the internet access i pay for, but ATT will not allow me to use the service i pay for as i want to use it without an additional $30 charge... we will have to have a more in depth talk when i am not on vacation about why they restrict my usage of the 2GB of internet i pay for...

and then there's the tournament... you might have heard aready (snarky reference to previous entries, no doubt)... we are relegated to the crappy fields and i mean dangerous infields with a pitcher's rubber that is raised and therein a serious risk of injury for ground balls hit back to the pitcher... the sand infield itself (and it is sand) is like running and playing on a beach at times... the sudden and random changes from harder clay sand to soft sand along base paths and other spots are an ankle injury waiting to happen... i may have thrown my arm out when my foot slid out from under me as i picked up a grounder, spun around, and threw to third... and while the good fields have food and space, these are cramped and have unsavory food trucks right next to the fields (just what you want to breath in playing ball) and all in all, a less than appealing atmosphere for a three day tournament... and nobody wants to hang out here, so it's mostly deserted between games... definitely not a tournament experience... but with jackson (which she's not wandering away texting) and some of the team who hung out, fun fun fun...

but this is a vent...

so then there's the hotel the team chose (this is suckage based mostly on location) which is a half an hour from the fields without traffic... just a bit beyond ridiculous as there are many choices closer to the fields... i am not sure just what the point of choosing a play with such a long drive, but so many things about this weekend were puzzling...

and then there's the game of softball... probably making everything less enjoyable (probably?) is that i played poorly today... no batting practice and my bat was typically not in synch the way it is not in synch when i don't do some batting practice before a game... i changed the lineup the coach set and put myself down from 4th to 8th... i hit close to 1.000 when i take batting practice... i hit under .300 when i don't... but the batting cages i planned on using were at the other good fields where i thought we were playing until an hour before game time...

communication for the team appears to be solely through the facebook team site and apparently the entire team has the facebook app and every message posted to the team site automatically downloaded to their phones... not going to happen with my phone for several reasons, not the least of which is i don't want facebook and all the related apps that integrate with it accessing my phone... i get text messages when someone posts to my fb wall and for a few other reasons, but fb does not send text for group sites or other reasons so i do not get an instant message on my phone when they use facebook to communicate... like when they changed dinner plans for tonight from 730pm to 8:00pm and didn't tell anyone except to post to the facebook site... guess i am just old-fashioned about wanting my personal communications and social life communicated directly to me rather than posted for the world and expecting me to check in every thirty seconds like an app or something...

so grumble grumble vent vent vent, i hit like crap and that sucked, but even worse, the entire team hit like crap (we scored something like 7 runs in 4 games, 5 in just one of those games... definitely not the way to play softball)... and the fielding was amazingly bad... in the first game if i did not make the out via strikeout or groundout to me, there were practically no outs being made by the other team... balls through legs in the infield and outfield... every ball hit to the outfield became a home run when it should have been caught easily... it was really disheartening and set the tone for the day...

it turns out half the team went out partying last night until after 4am and at least one did not remember how he got back to the hotel... that guy is our leadoff hitter and supposedly best outfielder and he stood out in the outfield watching balls roll past him and past other players and roll all the way to the fence several times... talk about letting a team down... why bother paying hundreds to register and attempt to play in a softball tournament if you are not interested in actually showing up ready to play?... especially when more than a dozen other people count on your to actually play... a lot of the team just does not seem to want to bend down and field a ball, infield and outfield, and that frustrated me more and more throughout the day and was major suckage...

pitching i did fine, though i walked more batters than i usually do because i did not want better hitters to hit the ball to the team not playing well behind me... and my arm was not feeling good at all... shoulder... but you can't strike out everybody in softball so we were creamed in all four games... no hitting and no fielding equals fast losses... i don't even feel like i got a workout and i feel like i wasted a lot of money...

so i vent...