It was 47 degrees outside when I got up this morning. What kind of weather is this, and where did the heat go? NOT THAT I AM COMPLAINING. It was awesome. I am actually wearing a long sleeve shirt, and actually needed a light jacket. Amazing.
It was a crazy busy weekend, and it will be a crazy busy week. Here’s the recap (as blog-readers who hate “I did this, and this, then this” entries grumble and mutter)…
Friday night I did something I hadn’t done in 10 years — I went to a high school football game. An acquaintance from the photo forum shoots high school games in this area for the newspaper, and he invited me out to the Clear Creek-Galveston Ball game to practice shooting ball sports. I do so much running and triathlon photography, but I’ve done very little football/baseball/soccer shooting. It was Creek’s homecoming, but Ball is one of the top teams in the district and they won by a score of A LOT to A LITTLE. (Seriously, it was 50-something to 14 when I left at the end of the 3rd quarter.)
The first thing I realized was that football photography is not as easy as I thought! I never have any trouble following the ball when I can see the whole field and all the players, but I discovered that when watching the game through the narrow view of the camera lens, I kept getting faked out by the fakes! They’d pretend to pass the ball, and I’d follow the guy running with his arms crossed — but no ball. Geez. By the second and third quarters, I was doing much better and could actually follow the play. I need practice, practice, practice.
In the end, I took about 200 shots and had to immediately throw out about half of them for being out-of-focus or not actually capturing any action because I hit the shutter too late. I did get 10-15 good keepers though. I was happy, and hope to be able to go out to another game and practice more. Anything to build up a small portfolio would be good…you never know when I might need it, right?
After getting home from that game I stayed up way too late watching a couple episodes of Firefly and surfing the web, and then slept until noon on Saturday. It was glorious, except when I got up and realized what a nice day it was outside, I felt sort of guilty for wasting half of it in bed. But not that guilty.
I ran a few errands and even stopped by Oshman’s in hopes of getting an Astros NLCS Champions t-shirt. After hearing the news about long lines on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, I figured things would have calmed down by the weekend. Not so. I walked into the store around 1:00 to see a line of at least 100 people stretching all the way across the shoe section and into the women’s clothing section. I’ll have to get a t-shirt some other time, as I was not really ready to stand in line.
I had a soccer game at 3:30 where we suffered a frustrating defeat, then had just enough time to go home and shower before picking up Chik-Fil-A and heading to Chris’s to watch Game 1 of the World Series while working on homework. The White Sox didn’t beat the Astros; the Astros beat the Astros. How many chances to score did they blow? Crap. Blah. Crap.
Yesterday morning I was up at 8:00 (8:00! on a Sunday!) to make owl cookie dough, otherwise known as playing domestic goddess for one of the two times per year I do that. (The other is Thanksgiving.) Now I just have to find the time to actually bake the cookies. I headed out at 10:15 headed for the Ironstar Half Ironman Triathlon at Lake Conroe. I was supposed to be there at 11:30 to take photos of the second half of the race.
This is the part where I say that I would have been there on time if I had just followed the map. But I, with my fabulous sense of direction, decided that I could outsmart the map and take a shortcut.
Bad idea.
Next thing I know, I’m pseudo-lost in the middle of the Sam Houston National Forest and end up circling all of Lake Conroe before I finally get back to where I’m supposed to be — at 12:15. Yep, 45 minutes late. Final score: Map 1, Sarah 0.
I shot runners finishing until 3:00 and pondered the idea of attempting a Half Ironman someday myself. If I trained properly, I figure I could pull it off in 7.5-8 hours…
I got back to Clear Lake with just enough time to run by the T-Mobile store to pick up a new phone — the ultra-cool Motorola Razr. Woo! It’d been so long since I upgraded phones through them that I was able to get a pretty good deal, better than I could’ve gotten on ebay, and only had to sign a 1-year contract instead of 2-year. The camera is way better than the one on my old phone, and the Razr is really thin so it will fit in my pocket perfectly…just in time for the World Series tomorrow night!
(I’d be lying if I didn’t say that the World Series was a big reason I decided to get a new camera phone immediately. I don’t know if I will be able to carry my point-n-shoot while I’m doing the runner job, but I’m sure they’ll let me carry my cell phone.)
I had a soccer game at 6:00 and we totally killed the other team, which was a nice change of pace from our normal losses. My women’s team has recruited a group of 5 high school girls and they are awesome — great footwork, great passing, great shooting ability, and they have the endurance to run for freaking ever. I barely broke a sweat!
I headed straight from the soccer game to Chris’s for Game 2. My feelings can be summed up as this: “They’re pinch hitting Vizcaino? Vizcaino?? He sucks! Why not Palmeiro, or Lamb? Vizcaino??” Vizcaino hits a 2-RBI liner into left field. “I LOVE VIZCAINO!” Lidge comes in. “Lidge is gonna shut ’em down tonight. No demons, baby.” Lidge gives up a game-winning home run to a guy that hit exactly ZERO home runs in the regular season. “Well @$%#!”
The worst part? Both of those games were totally winnable for the ‘Stros. GRR. At least they’re coming home to Houston.
I got home after the game and spent another 2 hours working on homework. I’m still not quite finished; I might actually have to leave a bit early today to finish. I’ve just been so busy lately. And it’s not getting any better this week: class tonight, World Series games Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, then going to DC for the weekend on Friday…
whew! okay. 1- I love the football photos!! The two on the photoblog are pretty good. I think it would be so cool to be able to take good pics. I can barely operate the point n shoot. 2- what the heck is owl cookie dough??
3- new Razr phone= Cassie jealous. 4- I want to do a half Ironman too.
Definitely take some kind of camera with you when running, I really wish I had at the Super Bowl.
As “I did this, and this, then this” blog entries go, this one was pretty enjoyable to read. Wow, your life is busier than mine with a wife and 3 kids.
I really think we can beat these guys (Sox). We really outplayed them both games. We hit. Wandy did an excellent job coming in for Roger. Pettite was awesome!!! Mo got back in the hit column. Things are looking great, I think. We’re gonna take these 3 games in Houston, I know.
Only thing that concerns me is Roger’s availability. Hope Backe and whoever follows him do well. Maybe if it goes to 7 we can get the Wizard back in there or maybe get Pettite in game 6 on short rest if we can clinch. It’s going to be interesting.
Ooo…. I want me one of those Razr’s. I shouldn’t have read this entry because it weakens my resolve. Is it fabulous? Wait. Don’t answer that.
yeah — football photography is harder than it looks! i’ve shot a couple of games for the newspapers i’ve worked for, and i usually only ended up with a handful of good shots — in addition to finding it difficult just to follow the action through the viewfinder, it’s tough to compose a decent shot where the player and the ball are both in the frame (and filling the frame, ideally) and everything is in focus. i have a TON of respect for good sports photographers.