Entering Braves Country

It's been a busy week. I've spent a great deal of it in Braves Country.
What is Braves Country? Well, Turner Field, home of the Atlanta Braves baseball team.
Now, I grew up in New York and I'm a die hard Yankees fan. And I'm not just a fair-weather fan. I was a Yankees fan in the 1980s, when it was very hard to be a Yankees fan.
And this week, thanks to interleague play in Major League Baseball, the New York Yankees came to Atlanta for a three-game series that started Monday night.
I bought a pair of tickets to the three-game series and invited friends and my 10-year-old nephew Nicholas to the games.
Monday night my friend Rachel came. We ate hot dogs and discovered the Bicardi bar at the stadium.

Rachel and me

I worried we would get rained out. The weather was so terrible earlier in the day. But the rain cleared out and we had a beautiful night at the stadium. And the Yankees won.
Tuesday night, I took Nicholas as part of his birthday present.

Lisa and Nicholas ready to cheer on the Yankees

 We both got a gift when we saw Alex Rodriguez hit a grand slam home run to help the Yankees begin a rally. We ate pizza and sodas and had a beautiful night for baseball. And the Yankees won.
Wednesday night my friend Jill came with me, and wouldn't you know it, I had the best seats of the series and it RAINED. We were just about field level, but got chased back up into the concession area for a good part of the game when the rain got rather heavy. We ate more concession food and rediscovered the Bicardi bar. ;)

Jill and Lisa before the sky opened up

Now Jill is a Braves and Red Sox fan, but we are still friends. ;)
So, not a great night for baseball, but the Yankees won.
I was so exhausted after the three-game series. I had hoped to take Wednesday off from work, but no such luck.
When Friday came I was glad I had no where to go and no where to be but on my couch.
Except I had a 4-mile race on Saturday morning at, you guessed it, Turner Field!
The Braves Country Father's Day 4-miler actually finished near home plate. That was really fun.
I ran the race with my friends Rachel (who went to the game with me Monday night) and Angela.
Here we are at the end of the race.

Rachel, Lisa and Angela, still fresh as daisies post race

The best part of this 4-mile race? Going out to breakfast with these gals afterward!
So, I've spent a lot of time in Braves Country this week. It was time well spent.

Showing my Tiger stripes

I'm a graduate of the University of Missouri, and a proud Mizzou Tiger.
Living in Atlanta, being a fan of Mizzou sports meant catching the occasional Tiger football or basketball game on ESPN or ABC when they aired, always taking a second seat to ACC and SEC games, since Atlanta is home to teams in both of those conferences.
I'd talk about the Big 12 conference and watch co-workers or, worse, Georgia Bulldog fans, roll their eyes at me.
Well, all that changes on July 1, when Mizzou enters the SEC conference.
I have mixed emotions about the change, but then, when I was going to Mizzou, we were still the Big 8 conference. Then we became the Big 12, and now we're an SEC school.
I hate to admit it, but I am going to miss the rivalry with the Kansas Jayhawks. I'll miss the Border Wars.
But what I am going to enjoy is being able to see my team play games, either in person or on TV with more regularity. The last time I saw a Mizzou game in person I was a senior in college and now I'm planning to drive to the OTHER Columbia, Columbia, S.C., this fall to see the Tigers play the Gamecocks.
And I am completely enjoying that Mizzou officials have been courting the Atlanta alumni base.
I've already seen Mizzou head football Gary Pinkel TWICE in the past month in person.
I met him a few weeks ago at the Coaches Caravan, when he and head basketball coach Frank Haith came and talked with about 150 alums. I got to meet Atlanta Falcon Sean Weatherspoon, who is also a Mizzou grad.
I had a nice chat with Frank Haith, even showing him the silly photo my college roomie Patti and I took on our campus tour last summer.

Parking in Frank Haith's space

Coach Haith laughed at my photo and my belief that the Tigers had a stellar basketball season because Patti and I parked in his spot. He said that sign is actually no longer there. It kept getting stolen. D'Oh! Silly college pranksters. ;)
Coach Pinkel was nice, too. When he introduced himself to me and shook my hand he said. "I'm Gary Pinkel." I replied, "Yes, sir, I know who you are. I'm Lisa."
Coach Pinkel was back in Atlanta on June 6 for a "Welcome to the SEC Party" at the J.W. Marriott Hotel in Buckhead. What a party! Alumni from Texas A&M, which is also entering the SEC, were there as well. Hundreds of people showed up, and I'm not sure they thought that many would be there.
Both schools had team merchandise shops set up, and I bought these Tiger ears.

Sporting my new Tiger ears

The photo isn't the best. My iPhone is the 3GS and doesn't have a flash, so in low light I get a photo that looks like this.
And later that night, a fellow Tiger pal and friend said Gary Pinkel had tweeted me and my Tiger ears. What?
I joined twitter just to see what she was talking about. And there I was, in all my Tiger ears glory, looking on as Gary Pinkel rallied the faithful. I'm on the right in the background.

I'm famous!

So, I really did show my Tiger stripes this week!

In the Garden

My side yard summer garden is coming along quite nicely, other than that disquieting incident with a chipmunk or squirrel that dug up my eggplant.
I tried to find another Black Beauty eggplant at Home Depot, Walmart and Pike Nursery, but had no luck. Ended up replacing what I wanted with Ichiban eggplant, which is long and thin, rather than fat and round. I'm sure if I can get several fruit off the plant, it will taste just fine in my homemade eggplant risotto.
This year I planted some string beans. My dad gave me some seeds that he used in his garden last year and I have been eating string beans for a couple of weeks  now. I should have checked the plants tonight to see if there were more to pull.

string beans out of the garden

I've also gotten the first few Sweet 100 cherry tomatoes from the garden. That's about as early as I have ever pulled tomatoes from my garden in Atlanta. When I lived on St. Simons Island, Ga., and then in Jacksonville, Fla., I could almost bank on getting ripe tomatoes in June, but in Atlanta that is rarer. We had such a mild winter this year, I planted my summer garden in mid March, so I should not be surprised I'm getting the first early produce now.

I don't just have produce coming in. My blue lace cap hydrangeas looked really pretty this spring.

Blue lace cap hydrangeas

I got this plant because a friend of mine, who happens to be a master gardener, gave me some cuttings from his plants. Actually, Bob gave me lots more than just this one plant. He gave me a dozen cuttings. I dutifully planted all 12 down the ugly chain link fence along the left side of my yard and knew that in a few years I'd have lovely flowering shrubs to look at and not knocked about metal fencing.

Well, that was a lovely plan. Unfortunately, I hired Daryl to mow my grass and clean out the gutters. And Daryl, God love him, took his weed whacker and went along the fence line and killed every last one of those hydrangeas I'd just planted. I did not rehire him.

Lesson learned? Always mow your own yard if you don't want anyone to cut something you'd rather leave growing.

And that's what's been happening in the garden.

Summer fun at Summerfest

For the second year in a row, I ran the Summerfest 5K in Atlanta.
This race is in the Virginia-Highland area of Atlanta, a fun, hip, urban neighborhood. The race is part of Summerfest, a weekend arts and music festival. The race sort of kicks all of that off.
What's nice about running the race, other than it has a couple of challenging hills, is when it is finished, I can walk around the festival before the actual festival starts. It was nice to be able to talk to the artists about their work.
And the race morning could not have been better. A storm the day before brought in a cool snap, so it was about 55 degrees and very low humidity. Not bad for June 2!
Along the course, and just around the neighborhood in general, was this message by a graffiti artist:

As you can see, they were in all different colors all around Virginia-Highland. I don't know who WB is, but I really liked the message.
What I took away from the street art was this: I need to allow that my body is a little slower after all of my cancer treatment. I need to accept that. And I need to appreciate what my body can still do. I can still run races. And I can still have fun doing them.
Now, onto the found money pig. I realize that anyone who has just started reading this blog might not know about how I collect all of the money I find on races, and other places. I've found several pennies over the past week. All of them got deposited to feed the pig.

The found money pig

I didn't find any running the Summerfest 5K, but that's OK. There are lots more races coming up for me this summer.