America's Past Time

That pasta recipe will have to wait, as blog-worthy events occurred last night. These events require a little backstory: In early May, some of The Pit's friends decided to hold a BBQ and baseball game event. These friends live about 3 minutes walk from Nationals Park, and the idea was that we would barbecue on their apartment building's rooftop garden, and then mosey down to the stadium and watch some baseball. Alas, just as The Pit and I arrived at their building, the skies opened up and it started pouring. We all then spent the afternoon in their apartment building's rec room, munching on chips and watching the weather station on TV. The rain never let up, and the game was postponed.

Which brings us to last night, when the make-up Orioles-Nationals game was scheduled to start at 7 PM. I know nothing of either team (or actually, baseball in general), but was pretty excited to get out of the house for an evening. Although I didn't get my hopes too high, as The Pit and I had looked outside yesterday morning, and duly noted both the ominous gray clouds and weather.com's prediction of a 60-70% chance of thunderstorms in the evening. On his way home from work, The Pit called me and said he thought he heard thunder. However, by the time he got home and we had finished dinner, it still wasn't raining, and in fact weather.com had downgraded the threat of thunderstorms to a mere 5-10% chance. Treacherous, treacherous weather.com.

We stupidly forgot our umbrella at home and decided that it was too hot for jackets, and set off to the game on the Metro. By the time we arrived the 3rd inning was just winding down, and we witnessed approximately 4 minutes of baseball. I took the following picture after we settled in our seats, and before I had even figured out which team I was supposed to be rooting for:


As it turned out, that information would have been superfluous anyway, as exactly 3 minutes and 28 seconds later, I snapped another picture of the same scene:


We huddled under the overhang with the rest of the fans for a long time, hoping that the rain would pass quickly. However, it just got worse and worse, and the lightening was starting to make people a bit nervous. Here's a close up of the message from the stadium about the 'severe' storms:


Eventually we scrambled to marginally better shelter by the hot dog stand, where we clustered around The Pit's friend with an iPhone, and watched the dark red blobs of weather persistently clustered around the area. For lack of anything better to do, we also spent $11 on two disgusting hot dogs. These were seriously some of the worst and simultaneously most expensive hot dogs I have ever eaten, and I have significant doubts about their 'all beef' description. I guess it's unlikely that they were 'all rat,' even though that was the adjective that sprung to mind when I was eating mine.

After about an hour and a half of this, the rain began to wind down, and The Pit and I gratefully took this opportunity to flee to the Metro and go home. As it turns out according to this rather gloomy news report, ours was a wise decision. Although the game was eventually resumed for a short amount of time, the storms returned, and the whole thing was called a little before midnight, after six innings of play.

So, $20 for tickets, $5.40 for Metro fare, and $11 for hot dogs...$36.40. The memories? Priceless:


Although in all seriousness, the lightening we saw on the way home was so awesome, it put both of us a good mood for the rest of the night. Well, once we got inside and took off our wet clothes anyway.