A's vs Rangers, June 17th.

Last night on a whim I decided to take my son to the game (Free Parking Tuesdays!), and it was one helluva battle with a lot of action, we saw it with a great group of friends from work, and even though we had to leave early (bedtime), we had a great time.

Until I got home.

Now, I have to set this up for you. I'm writing this story for my own sake as much as yours. I made a mistake I wouldn't wish on anyone, so consider this as part cautionary tale, part personal closure - which has eluded me since this discovery, despite my desperation to put it behind me.

Rewind to earlier in the day at the office; I discovered a friend attempting to buy a bleacher ticket online. "Ah, don't do that," I say, with the confidence of a seasoned walk-up fan. "On a Tuesday night, you can get bleacher tickets from the electronic kiosks at the park - save yourself those fees, man." He ended up doing precisely that.

But I'm already getting ahead of myself.

When I told my son Tony that we were going to the game, of course he is super-excited. I couldn't pack our stuff fast enough, we couldn't get out the door quick enough. When we finally were on the road about an hour before gametime, I suddenly got a phone call.

I had a studio job booked that one of our recent graduates was going to work. Hit time was 7pm, right around the same time when we should have been taking off our caps for the National Anthem. That phone call I got was my student employee, telling me he was locked out of the building.

At this point, I've pulled all the way to the right lane and am looking to exit. The two exits I want are both backed up onto the freeway, I need to pull over and make some calls pronto.

The third exit is clear, so I pull off the road and dial up our IT person who oversees the electronic locks on the building. He informs me that the campus PD has control of the outer door locks, and that the graduates from last month have been erased. The good news is that our people control the inside electronic locks, so my student worker will be able to get in to the studio - if he can get into the building.

I start frantically calling other co-workers to no avail, contemplating whether or not I could turn 180, fly home to get my card key, and fly to work in approximately 30 minutes. I'm pretty sure Tony is asking me some questions, but he senses the severity of my situation and quietly hugs his monky pillow while strapped into his seat, no doubt listening to me freak out a bit.

Next is to call back my student, let him know that if he can get in, the studio will be accessible. While conversing with him, he catches a teacher walking through the halls who lets him in. I confirm that he can get into the studio, and crisis is averted! Fire up engine, get back on freeway, only lost about 15-20 minutes of tailgate time.

Finally find our party, get parked, and crack a beer. Tell co-worker party my tale of woe (short version), just happy to be there. The time is 6:50pm.

After single beer, we go to get our tickets, as party has left ahead of us to catch first pitch. I contemplate pounding second beer, except Mommy isn't here, so I can't afford to get too drunk. As we approach the south gate, I see giant lines in front of the metal detectors. WTF, I think. I hustle to the kiosk with Tony in tow, and re-familiarize myself with the odd process of swiping my card last on this machine. Trying to go through it as quickly as possible, I didn't change the Quantity on the Number of Tickets page, so I hit the back button, change Quantity to 2, then NEXT.

Welp, that ticket page defaults to Diamond Level seats. I intended to buy bleacher seats. You can see where this is going.

Right at the "Review" page, the guy next to me tells me something about "The third ticket is your receipt". Now, I'm only one beer deep, and I should have caught the fact that I was about to spend 3.5x the money I had intended; but instead I listen to this guy next to me who essentially distracted me at the moment I should have realized that I was buying the wrong tickets.

Now here is the real kicker - I did not realize I had bought the wrong tickets until after Tony and I had returned home.

We went straight to where our party was in LF bleachers, had a great time with friends, saw the "New Big Three" of Jaso, Norris, and Vogt put on a power display, and by the time we left the A's were up 8-3, on the back of Derek Norris' first of two huge pinch hits, this one a 3-run home run. I maintained my sobriety nursing a second, single beer for about four innings. I bought Tony one of these fancy Rickey Henderson figures (McFarlane Toys) for like $30 - in part because they didn't have a kids' sized Coco shirt, which is what he had originally asked me for - and I figured that would also have cost me about $30.

So, upon returning home and after he finally went to sleep, and I'm emptying my pockets to change my clothes, I throw the tickets on a table and notice the the total on the receipt - $108 for two tickets. I did a double-take. I checked the date, thinking maybe this receipt had been hiding in these pants' pockets from a previous game. Nope - June 17, 2014. I look at the tickets. Sec 114, Row 15, Seats 5 and 6. We spent the whole game (happily) in the bleachers. Had I known I had accidentally bought these tickets I could have gone to Ticket Services before entering the park. Had I discovered it after I entered, I could have given them to my friends in pairs, we could have taken turns sitting in incredible seats on the first deck.

But instead, I discovered it at home, around the 9th inning, after Derek Norris 2nd hit of the game, a 2-run double, making it a 10-5 game at one point. What was a great night at the park turned into a lot of holding my face in my palm at home, trying to retrace my steps, figure out how I could have made such a colossol error and not have discovered it until it was entirely too late.

I couldn't sleep. (I took a shot of tequila.)
I've been trying to shake it ever since, but I am still grinding my teeth and staring into the hole in my wallet, asking the universe what could I have done that would warrant such a slight of karmic injustice.

Did I mention it's my birthday this week?

What else can I write about

Some more random tidbits from the DrumR throne:

- I have a monthly jazz gig every 4th Wednesday from 6pm-9pm at Cato's Ale House in Oakland, CA. Under the name "Jim Richards Trio", I am generally accompanied by my former college bandmate Lorenzo Farrell on organ, plus a guest third musician, either on guitar, saxophone, etc. I enjoy meeting new people through this gig, networking with new musicians, and generally playing for the sheer joy of it. The audience is as authentic as it gets, as on some nights we've finished songs to raucous applause, only to be greeted by crickets upon the end of the next, less-well-executed tune. They are not there to hear you, but when you get their attention musically, they appreciate it. Also Cato's has killer food specials, so much so that sometimes I forgo the free band meal we get and pay for one of the many daily specials.

- Tomorrow, Saturday, I'll be performing with East Bay Brass Band at Rockwall Winery in Alameda, where they are holding their food truck event "Urban Palette". Really looking forward to that gig, even though I'm more of a beer drinker myself. Hoping the wife and kid can come without getting bored.

- I'll be turning 41 this month. Hoping for an epic tailgate at an Oakland A's game. Due to the nature of the A's schedule, my birthday always ends up on interleague series. I'm learning to get over that.

- I don't go out very much, but I heard Ginger Baker is playing Yoshi's Oakland AGAIN. Last time I missed it. Friday and Saturday 6/14 and 6/15. I have a few of Ginger Baker's jazz albums, as well as some live recordings, and even as Ginger ascends into octagenarian status, his looping groove and thumping toms sound great in a jazz context. He has such regard for the music, even if sometimes he comes down a bit heavy-handed. Also I tend to forget how much of his style is so directly influenced by African drumming. Hope wife will like it, I'm draggin her out to one of these shows.

- I keep listening to this album "Love in Flying Colors" by the Foreign Exchange. Just the combination of tones, instruments and voices, ... just really working well for me for the most part. When I'm not listening to that, I'm listening to Slayer back catalog. Also when it gets hot my reggae collection gets the dust blown off it.

- There is so much television I don't watch - basically all the bigs: Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones, ... wife is still watching Mad Men, so I get some updates on that. But I really want to see Silicon Valley. The first episode they put online was so good, and I am such a Mike Judge fanboy. (*I saw Frog Baseball in a movie theater! Spike and Mike's Festival of Animation.) King of the Hill was the last television sitcom I watched.

- I feel like out of all the things I need to do, "something creative" is atop my list. I love playing drums, I love music, but I feel like my creative juices are getting backed up. Maybe it's all the cover songs my bands are playing. I have this overwhelming desire to build a Franken-something: some type of electronic drum monster, or maybe a bicycle, or maybe some sort of electronic drum monster bicycle. I just dunno.

- I hope when I get my MBPro back, I can still find this blog.

Biannual update - 2014

Well, we are all two full months into the baseball season, and despite my A's ominous first few weeks, with New Closer Johnson losing games for the team right and left, Oakland's sluggers are slugging and the pitchers are dealing. Even national (east coast) sports media are paying attention, and while I will continue to complain about them, I can't knock it. I don't think I made it to more than one game in May, so looking to rectify that this month.

My computer died yesterday. I'm typing this on a borrowed laptop from work. Making me think I need to admin the home laptop so wifey and I can share comfortably. Might as well create a log-in for the kid too.

... who is now 4.5 years old. He keeps getting bigger and bigger. Asks "I want a brother or sister" a little too often, but he just might get one.

I've been fairly nostalgic lately for comicbooks. I've been trying to pick up around where I left off, which would be somewhere around 1989-1990. Even then, I was just discovering the more sophisticated and adult comicbook world, and upon entering high school, immersed myself in music. I think skateboarding was somewhere in-between, as I remember riding my bmx bike AND skateboarding to Comics & Comix on Telegraph. My regular run back then was Karim Cyclery to check out the latest decks, pick up some stickers, then head toward Comics & Comix to see what I could score. A couple of their employees used to float me discounts on all the stuff I bought.

Anyhoo, so I've been hitting all my favorite 2nd hand stores for the old prints of Cerebus collections, recently picked up "Women", and already had "High Society". Some internet perusing had led me to a critique of the "mysoginist" works of Dave Sim and Gerhard, and quite frankly, I didn't remember that at all from what I had read. With the benefit of hindsight, I intend to find out what that critique was referring to.

I also have been reading samurai comics from Kazuo Koike, having been a Lone Wolf and Cub fan, I began Samurai Executioner as well. Other titles I'd like to dive into include works by my favorite comic artists, such as John Byrne's X-Men, or whatever happened to the New Mutants? Other titles I remember liking DC's Ambush Bug quite a bit too, wonder what became of that one.

Baseball reading is also something I am enjoying, although I have a plenty of reading to do before my next purchase (which will be this one). Among others, I have the newly publushed "The A's", on their entire history; also I am reading one called "Into The Temple of Baseball"a collection of vignettes to the game. For my son's bedtime stories, "The Cartoon History of Baseball" features every team. Of note, mentions of this out-of-print title online refer to its scarcity/rarity - I bet if folks could log off for two seconds and walk to a used book store they would find it is not so scarce.

Anything else?

We went camping last month. I bought kid a nice bike with accompanying expensive helmet (adult SM). Drum collection getting bigger, much to wife's chagrin.  Enjoying twitter better than any other social media platform, save for maybe tumbr (which helped send me on my recent comicbook jaunts).

But overall, bored by technology. The death of my work laptop meant absolutely zilch to me, including losing my entire iTunes library and Photos. The music I don't care about losing so much because I built it with my own CDs. The photos I do care about losing, but most I had backed up online. While my work stuff might be lost forever, work will always be here. If there wasn't a 40-hour work week, we'd never get to go home.

 I can't wait to take the training wheels off kid's bike so we can go exploring together.