Oh, yeah - yesterday!
Following my usual habit, I've been doing all my yearly medical stuff in the same month, so I always remember when to make all the appointments. I was at the dentist yesterday, and was told by the hygienist that my teeth, after 5 years without a professional cleaning, look better than a lot of her 6-month return visits. Go, me! :-) I do have 2 tiny beginnings of cavities that the dentist wants to fill, including one that's along the edge of another filling (possibly a faulty job the first time, but I honestly don't even remember which of the dentists I've seen over the years put that one in...), but it's only going to be about $65 out of pocket. Not nearly as bad as I'd feared it would be, after 5 years.
The cool stuff from yesterday, though, was the softball. I've been intermittently playing on taoist_pagan's department's team, filling in when folks go on vacation. We played a double-header, and won both games. :-) The first one, if I remember correctly, was a 34-4 victory. Now, the other team failed to field the necessary number of players and was penalized by 4 runs, outs in the first two spots in their lineup, and no opportunity to bat in the first inning, and were one player short in the field, so it wasn't that impressive a victory. But I got a couple of solid base hits, and the whole team was just very consistent, both on offense and defense. It was the second game that was *much* more of a rush, for all concerned. We were playing against a full team, with some pretty darn good players. We started out the game giving up several runs in the top of the first inning, which kinda rattled our pitcher (the ump kept calling pitches "low arc," when he and many other folks felt they were perfectly well within the 6-12' arc limit). But we exploded back over the next few innings, keeping up the consistent offense and defense. taoist_pagan smacked a homer, lots of people just kept us moving around the bases with singles and doubles, and I chose to walk in a run, got walked once to advance the runners, and got another single. *Much* better batting than I usually come up with! The highlights of the game were *definitely* the double plays, though. We got two in one game!!! One was a shortstop-second base-third base bang-bang-bang combo, clean as a whistle. The other was a huge fly ball, popped right over the roving fielder's head, and picked up by the center fielder. Who proceeded to fire it straight in to home base, where yours truly took a big lunge-step forward, caught it (outfield to home base, nothing but webbing!), kept the back foot on the base, and got two people out with one base tag. Final score, 12-9. Wooooooo!!!
The cool stuff from yesterday, though, was the softball. I've been intermittently playing on taoist_pagan's department's team, filling in when folks go on vacation. We played a double-header, and won both games. :-) The first one, if I remember correctly, was a 34-4 victory. Now, the other team failed to field the necessary number of players and was penalized by 4 runs, outs in the first two spots in their lineup, and no opportunity to bat in the first inning, and were one player short in the field, so it wasn't that impressive a victory. But I got a couple of solid base hits, and the whole team was just very consistent, both on offense and defense. It was the second game that was *much* more of a rush, for all concerned. We were playing against a full team, with some pretty darn good players. We started out the game giving up several runs in the top of the first inning, which kinda rattled our pitcher (the ump kept calling pitches "low arc," when he and many other folks felt they were perfectly well within the 6-12' arc limit). But we exploded back over the next few innings, keeping up the consistent offense and defense. taoist_pagan smacked a homer, lots of people just kept us moving around the bases with singles and doubles, and I chose to walk in a run, got walked once to advance the runners, and got another single. *Much* better batting than I usually come up with! The highlights of the game were *definitely* the double plays, though. We got two in one game!!! One was a shortstop-second base-third base bang-bang-bang combo, clean as a whistle. The other was a huge fly ball, popped right over the roving fielder's head, and picked up by the center fielder. Who proceeded to fire it straight in to home base, where yours truly took a big lunge-step forward, caught it (outfield to home base, nothing but webbing!), kept the back foot on the base, and got two people out with one base tag. Final score, 12-9. Wooooooo!!!