we opened the ballpark tonight for cards-astros game five. showed it on the scoreboard and in our bar. got a nice turnout, and a great game.

when a company offers free things like this in a town like this...well, they get some crazies. and so it was.

my favorite crazy...

i'd say 55-60 years old, she looked like arrested development's lucille austero [lucille 2]. incredibly like lucille. and she was way odd. [please look at the photo. it took me five minutes to find. thanks.]

carried a "purse," a round bag, baseball-shaped, with stitching and all, with "Cardinals" in script. she also had, perched in front of her, an albert pujols bobblehead. she sat at the bar, consuming copious amounts of bud light.

so, we're in the top of the ninth. eckstein's squirted through a two-out single, edmonds has drawn a walk, and suddently big al represents the go-ahead run.

he looks awful on a lidge slider.

so, lucille, and her miniature friend, stand up - "if you don't get a hit, i'm gonna smash your freakin' bobblehead! and i paid 32 bucks for this thing!"

apparently feeling threatened, pujols then sends a ball into orbit to left, a three-run homer to give the cards the lead against "lights out" lidge.

predictably, the place explodes.

unpredictably, lucille 2 stands up, dishes out some high fives, then freezes, pumps her hands to the sky (bobblehead in one hand), and yells "IT'S ALL BECAUSE OF THIS FUCKING BOBBLEHEAD! ALL BECAUSE OF THIS FUCKING BOBBLEHEAD!! YEAH BABY!!!!"

Yes, it converted from 'freak' to 'fuck,' and yes, I was terrified but incredibly amused. (I should note that I was sitting, with one buffer seat, next to her for the final four innings.)

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i live in a 'downtown' apartment, about four blocks from where the crack dealers and prostitutes roam, and less than a block from several well-trafficked drinking establishments. today, i believe, is my three-year anniversary in the building. they did not throw me a party.

for 34 months, i never felt any repercussions for this somewhat harrowing choice of residence. never an instance of vandalism. never so much as a dent in the car. the worst thing to happen had been arriving home from work late on a weekend, and either electing to get somebody towed from my spot (that i pay for), or deciding to park on the street. (no meters on weekends.)

in the last two months, however, it's changed.

mid-august, i got a pretty severe - big enough to be annoying, small enough to live with it - dent over a saturday night. i'm sure a drunk guy accidentally flipped to
'drive' instead of 'reverse' while trying to pull out, or some such stupidity. annoying.

early monday morning, however, criminal damage. some guy got to eight different cars in my parking lot. eight.

he knocked off all of our sideview mirrors. just random vandalism. absolutely sucks. almost.

the good news is that the cops got him, and he was severely intoxicated. police call came at 2:15 (a disturbing the peace call from one of my wonderful neighbors), and the arrest happened at 3:05. he was booked overnight, and it sure sounds like i'll get restitution for the work that needs to be done.

(it's a 405-dollar job to replace the windows, which is oddly cheaper than i expected.)

i got two estimates before work, and a third on my lunch. one of my parking lot mates was there. while my car has a relatively-modest 42,000 miles on it, hers was one week old. one freakin' week.

but at least we'll all get our cars fixed. it sure is odd driving without sideview mirrors.

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despite my opponent scoring five touchdowns in the monday night game, i'm going to escape with a victory in fantasy. the destroyers improve to 2-4. the roosters drop to 2-4. and this is without tony gonzalez (or trent green) providing anything. i think chris perry is on the verge of stardom. and i've got straight-shootin' shayne graham doing the kicking. i'm stupidly optimistic.

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in the interest of eliminating confusion, i'm going to change my posting times to just before midnight on the day to which the content refers. that is, despite the fact that today's post was written tuesday at 1 a.m., i'm setting it just before midnight monday. i think it's good logic.

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i've got no groceries. lunch tuesday is lined up as two apples and some microwave popcorn. no milk. (no cereal. no tomato soup.) no eggs. (no eggs.) no other fruits. no microwavable rice. sigh.