Baseball and Birthdays

For the first part of the day yesterday (I mean the afternoon), I just read and blogged on Sydney and Eliana's balcony. It was a beautiful, sunny day in Palo Alto, so it was the perfect thing to do.

Around 5, I drove John Watson, two AEPi rushees - John and Micah, and Micah's friend from Seattle up to Oakland for an A's game, where we met up with a bunch of other AEPi guys and a few more rushees. The company was great, but I was reminded of just how boring I find baseball. There were only seven runs in the entire game, and five of them were the Mariners'.

During the game, I had a big realization. Sports stadiums are just money-making machines for whomever owns them. I paid $18 just to let my car sit on asphalt for a few hours in a part of Oakland that is not particularly expensive. AEPi bought $400 worth of tickets just to sit, watch a game, and then leave. Food is super expensive only because it is being sold in the stadium. A small cup of Budweiser is $5. For the money you spend on two nacho dishes at the Coliseum, you could probably buy one of those giant Costco tortilla chip bags and a giant thing of salsa. Instead, you get 20 or 30 chips and just enough salsa and nacho cheese for those chips. It's highway robbery. For hundreds or thousands of people at least once a week for a whole season. And the Raiders play in the same stadium for football season. Whoever owns the Coliseum has got it made.

Anyway, the A's lost to the Mariners, and we may break the baseball game tradition next year because it was just kind of boring.

We got back to Stanford from the game at around 10. Clementine and a couple of her friends were having a birthday party at French House. I dropped my stuff off in my car, and walked over to French house, taking the scenic route along Lake Lagunita. At night, all the frogs come out, and the lake just sounds like a hundred frogs ribbit-ing nonstop. Meanwhile, dozens of ducks just float on the surface, sleeping I guess. I noticed them first when I heard a big splashing commotion on the lake and saw a couple flapping things frantically chasing each other in figure eights for half a minute. I guess they were either fighting or sexing, but I'm not sure.

Eventually I got to French House. After finding Aurelia and, true to tradition, dropping my jacket off in her room, I went down to the party. It turned out to be possibly the best party I've been to all year. It was great because I knew so many people there - probably because it was almost entirely juniors and seniors. I got to the perfect, fun level of drunk and then just never stopped running into friends for a few hours straight. Before anyone knew it, it was 1 am, but the party couldn't stop. The music went off for a few minutes and then started back up again. At some point, Ashley thought she wanted to go back to Yost, but then she kept having a good time, so we didn't. We probably didn't get back to Yost until 2:30, at which point we convinced Ben to watch a movie with us. Both of them ended up falling asleep in Ashley's bed during the beginning of Aladdin.

And that was the end of another great day of spring break. Time for another.