Day 79 - 05/10/2007

For lunch today, we went to Buffalo Wing Factory for chicken wings. Now, I'm not one that thinks wings are the best thing since sliced bread, but when lunch is on the boss, my standards all of a sudden become a little looser.

After it was all said and done, however, I wish I had stayed back at the office.

We arrived at the restaurant around 1145a and were one of the few parties in the house. It turned out that Thursday's special is All You Can Eat wings and fingers, so the place quickly filled up with other parties. After placing our orders (five of the seven of us ordered the special), we sat around the table, waiting for our food. After about 10 minutes, a lull came over the conversation. Not wanting to be unsocial, new topics of conversation were drawn from the well and the conversation ensued again. After 20 minutes of waiting, we had to go back to the well for the third tier of conversational topics. Shortly afterwards, our order arrived. (It should be noted that of the 20 or so tables in the place, we were the first ones to get any food from the kitchen during that entire time.)

Seeing as it took waaaaay too long to get the first round of wings, we immediately ordered our next round. It was a good thing we did, as that came about 10 minutes after the last wing from the first order was consumed. Once the second order came, we repeated the process with the third order. But it never arrived. After 20 minutes of waiting, we asked for the check (which took more than five minutes to arrive) and left (30 minutes after ordering the third round and it still hadn't arrived).

Note to self, don't go back too soon for unless you have a few hours to kill (and unless it's for happy hour as I did notice there were 30+ beers offered on tap, including Dominion's Oak Barrel Stout).

We had practice again tonight it was the best one we had all season. The kids are coming along and separating them into smaller groups really helped. I was in charge of the hitting drill. Each player got ten balls to hit off the T. I tried to help them with how to setup at the plate, how to swing, how to watch the ball and how to position themselves to hit in a certain direction. Some players were better than others and what I showed them was dependant on how they swung the first few times. Some of the kids, though, just weren't getting it. There was one player who came into the drill barely hitting the ball and left the drill hitting the last three solidly. It made me feel good seeing the improvement in just a few swings. Hopefully he'll be able to carry that forward into Saturday's game; I'm sure it would make his day were he to hit like that in the game. That one moment has made coaching worth it thus far; I can't wait to have more moments like that one.

After we got home from practice, I finished staining the floor of the deck. I had been worried that the stain wouldn't be the same, but after getting home from work on Wednesday, I saw that D was right and that it did blend together. So, with that in mind, I finished up the bulk of the deck (I just have to go over the entire deck with a roller to cover any missed spots) and will only have the bench, railings and planters left to stain. I can't wait to check this off my list of things to do. It's taken me far too long to do this chore, but (hopefully) I won't have to do it for another couple of years.