Stupor Moon is more like it....

I never saw the damn thing. Here's what I did see in the middle of last night, though:

* A downpouring thunderstorm, which woke me up sometime around 1:30 in the morning, and, along with me, Ebony,

* Ebony, who then spent the next hour banging appendages against walls and floor. Ultimately, Eleanor diagnosed it as her periodic earmite infestation; we wrangled her to a spot where Mommy treated the ears with our usual goop for that. She had some, but nothing in proportion to how she was carrying on.

* Finally, all this excitement got the older dog awake, just as everyone else was settling back down. She then moved up her usual 4:30 act to 3:15- went out, came in, and began whining. Incessantly. We finally gave her one of her Puppy Prozacs, which worked for maybe half an hour. Finally, I just got up at 4:15, headed for the kitchen (after letting Ebony, and of course Zoey, out to and in from the back yard- and Tasha, along with the rest of them, promptly shut up.



I spent the next half hour Not Feeding Them- cleaning up the kitchen from the night before, looking for Zoey after I put the cleaned grill top back outside and she chased back out again- and finally gave them their noms about 15 minutes early.

* And Tasha started whining again, about Nothing In Particular, roughly half an hour after that.

Le sigh.

I ultimately fell back asleep, thinking I got somewhere between six and seven hours between the three short sessions.

As for the Super Moon I never saw?  I've got better photographer friends with better cameras and I've now seen what they saw.
Close enough for NASA work.

Reyes-ing my spirits

Last night was Star Wars Night at the local baseball park. Why they do it in mid-June, and not May The Fourth when it should Be With You? No idea.  But this year's was especially attractive since they promised a full-game rehab appearance for Jose Reyes, one of my favorite recent former Mets. He signed two off-seasons ago with the hideous Miami Marlins, who traded him after one season to Toronto. Coincidentally, the Bisons also traded this past winter, replacing the Mets as their major league team with the Blue Jays. So when it was time for Jose to rehab after a nasty early season injury, the big boys didn't send him to Brooklyn or Binghamton as the Mets always used to do with their recovering stars:

Jose was jere.

I waffled about going last night, but ultimately passed. The game was a near sellout when I had to decide, and an online ticket would have been over 30 bucks by the time the convenience fee and processing fee were added in. (They now let you save two bucks by printing the actual ducat at home, but big whoop.) Plus, the game was a 6:00 start, and the yard would have been full. Besides, I've never seen quite the allure of having Darth and Obi-Wan sabering each other in the stands; they did it at the Fenway game I went to last summer, and it all seemed out of place.

So, instead, I opted for today, when I knew I could just walk up as usual and get a seat 20 rows behind the Bison dugout for all of 13 bucks.  Plus, early on, I had run of the place to get even closer to the boys as they warmed up, and even after the game began. (Not many Rich Products executives are using their Row A through R season seats on a hot Sunday in June.)

Also, unlike the deal at the Mets' ballpark, ushers are very live-and-let-live about where you actually sit. I never even looked for where my seat actually was; I spent roughly the first three and final two innings several rows closer to the field, and the middle innings under a roof overhang so I wouldn't be totally toasted out there.

It enabled shots like this:



That's Jose getting his pregame running in.  Ah, but no fielding practice: Reyes was only DHing today, so I only saw him the four times in regulation he came to the plate.  (Yes, he's wearing Number 1, not 7; no idea why.)

All of them were exciting, though. He almost beat out a routine grounder to first as the Bison leadoff hitter.Here he is, coming back to the dugout after that:


He then reached on an infield hit in the fourth (then Buffalo's first baserunner) and almost tried to stretch it to a double. He followed that by trying to steal second four times, all four being fouled off, before finally taking off on a hit-and-run that almost ended with him landing safely on third.  He ended the appearances I witnessed with a nasty comebacker to the pitcher that would have been a hit if it hadn't line-shotted right into the dude's glove.  When he went down in the ninth, I headed out; the game was still a scoreless tie; it didn't end until bottom 14, when another old Mets pal, Mike Nickeas, doubled and then scored after Reyes's pinch-hit replacement laid down a bunt and the Durham pitcher threw the ball away.

But Jose helped keep it going that long- 2 for 5, in an ultimate winning effort. And he'll be back for one more rehab appearance here tomorrow night!

----

Yet those weren't the only experiences of being out at a game on a beautiful day.

Before the game, there was lunch. And the highlight of the new Blue Jay affiliation isn't a major upgrade of players (they traded a lot of the AAA-level players to get Reyes and others at the major league level), or of talent generally (Toronto's and the Mets' AAA affiliates have roughly the same records so far), or of media presence (we can't watch Blue Jay games on local or cable television)- but we have a new staple at the concession stands.   Yes, I give you....



poutine.

It's more a Quebecois thing than Ontario-ish, but America's Hat is all the same down here, eh?, so this lovely mess of fries, cheese and gravy certainly hit the Canadian spot.  Once and only once, though. I washed it down with a Buffalo brewery craft beer and that was it for the rest of the game.

Now you might think that, to balance out that health hideousness, the team would now allow Celery to take a winning place in the daily Chicken Wing race held mid-game. They made us think it might be today. But, as with every previous appearance, Team Green came up wanting:

I did see kids with Celery plushies in the stands, and she apparently is getting her own bobblehead later this year, so there's still hope:)