Chavez Ravine

The Red Sox are in town this weekend for three exhibition games against the Dodgers, so we took Tessie to see the 2007 World Champions. She's been to two other baseball games already (and one in utero), but this was her first time seeing the team in whose honor she was named.

I certainly hope they'll do better next time: the Dodgers beat them, 3-1.

Even though the Red Sox have already begun their regular season with two games in Tokyo, these three games in L.A. are exhibition games, so it's a good thing this one didn't count. Nor will tomorrow's game, a throwback extravaganza to be held in the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum in front of 115,000 fans.

We decided to skip that one because, like so many other things in Los Angeles, the traffic and parking hassles are likely to more than cancel out any enjoyment of the actual event.

So we went tonight to Dodger Stadium, in Chavez Ravine, just north of downtown Los Angeles. A much sparser crowd of only 34,404 was in attendance, making the experience more pleasurable and giving Tessie plenty of room to roam and make new friends.

We left after the seventh inning stretch, which is normally something we would never do, but the game was late and we wanted to get Tessie home before it got too far past her bed time. Besides, the Red Sox left the game long before we did - all of the starters had been replaced by the seventh inning by what one of the Dodger announcers called the "Witness Protection Lineup."

Since it wasn't the same team, we broke with tradition and left before the final out. We actually even arrived home before the final out, which we saw on TV.

Tessie didn't get to see the Sox win, but she did make it to the seventh inning stretch:

The Long-Awaited San Diego Video

At last, I've finally got the promised video from our trip to San Diego earlier this month. This was all shot at the Reuben H. Fleet Science Center in Balboa Park, as we explored our way through the exhibits.

Reorganizing

Tessie seems to think that "alphabetically by artist" is a silly way to organize a CD collection. She is encouraging us to try someting new.

Easter Sunday in the Park

So how did we spend our Easter Sunday? Well, we spent a fair chunk of it driving around trying to figure out where we want to live.

Yes, the house hunt is still in progress. We've looked at an astounding number of homes, both with our agent and at open houses. We came close to making an offer on a house, but our excursion today convinced us to wait. In addition to the potential for a major housing market correction, we decided that we'd prefer to live in a neighborhood where the residents would be glad to see a police car drive slowly by.

We conducted an informal survey of a number of neighborhoods where we might find an affordable house, and ruled out several. We invented a formula for evaluating neighborhoods:

D = H/(B + J)

where D = desirability (the higher, the better)
H = total number of houses,
B = number of houses with bars on their windows or doors,
and J = number of junked cars parked on the property.

We drove through quite a few areas where D was less than one, which makes for a pretty dicey-looking neighborhood.

Tessie napped through most of the excursion, and was so well-behaved while awake that we decided to spend the rest of the day having fun.

Following lunch, a trip to the park, where Tessie got to ride the swings,

solo on the slide,
drive a fire truck with Mommy,
stop for a refreshing drink,
and, lastly, visit the big splooshy fountain at the mall.

Happy Easter!

Tessie, with help from her day care staff, made us an Easter card and dyed a pair of eggs. There is photographic evidence of Tessie's egg-dying, but our scanner is on the blink, so we can't share it here. We take it on faith that she created the egg decorations on the card, but believe that composing the verse inside is slightly beyond her current abilities.

You're probably curious now as to what it says. Sorry; here goes:

I'm a Little Chick

(Sung to "I'm a Little Teapot")

I'm a little chick inside an egg

I'm always sleeping - snoring away

Soon you'll hear a pecking, pecking sound

The egg will crack and I'll be found!

The card concludes with "Have an 'egg-stra' special Easter," in the belief that children are never too young for bad puns.

These items were sent home to us along with a staggering amount of Chinese-made junk, sugary foods and festive plastic detritus that other parents felt the need to distribute amongst the families of their offspring's cohort in celebration of the resurrection of Christ, the annual return of the Easter Bunny and/or their impending Economic Stimulus Payments.