Today was a long day, but we'll see if I can cram everything into one coherent post. First I woke up early to drive to Ft. Lauderdale to see the Red Sox play. Unfortunately, most of the Red Sox did not get up early and drive to Ft. Lauderdale themselves, so rather than seeing Nomar and Manny and Pedro, I got to see Adrian Brown, Cesar Crespo, and a cavalcade of non-roster invitees. I also saw the Cardinals and Mets play the other day, and here are my thoughts on the upcoming baseball season so far:

-reports of Mo Vaughn's offseason weight loss are greatly exaggerated.
-the way the Mets played the other day, I think my IM softball team could have beaten them. Tony Clark, a Red Sox castaway, managed to not only strike out three times but also misjudge a fly ball and then slip and fall on the warning track attempting to chase it down. It looked like a 3 Stooges act.
-at one point during the game there was a vacuuming contest between a man and an old woman. They both had vacuums and a carpet full of sand, and they reaced to see who could vacuum it up fastest. Mere words cannot describe how funny this was.
-in a spring training tradition (I'll post more about this later), they opened up the outfield gate and drove one of those ugly Avalanche Truck/SUV/Eyesore vehicles around the warning track.

Our next adventure was dinner at CiCis Pizza, voted #1 Pizza Chain in America by "Pizza Today" magazine and a score of elderly people. The pizza is quite bad, but for $3.99 a person for all-you-can eat it you really can't go bad. Unless you go to a CiCis in south Florida, where old people act like children. One man didn't get a plate for his pizza, he just piled it on his dirty tray. When he inevitably dropped some, he pushed it under a table with his cane then started yelling at the waitresses to clean it up. One old lady asked for a doggie bag and when they wouldn't give it to her (it's a buffet you dumbass), she pitched a fit and started yelling at the manager. Meanwhile Dragonball Z was blasting on a big screen TV and little kids were running around screaming and playing air hockey. You get what you pay for, I guess.

Then to culminate the evening, my parents and I joined my grandparents in their neighborhood for a round of Bingo. This turned out to be quite an ordeal, since my grandmother had to call neighbors in advance and arrange for them to change seats for the evening. They are very superstitious, and some of them show up an hour and a half early in order to secure their "lucky seats". Then if anyone wins who doesn't live in the neighborhood, they all start cursing under their breath about "foreigners". Keep in mind the "jackpots" are $6 for most games. One lady won 3 games, and the other old people immediately turned on her, cursing at her and such (especially since she was a "foreigner"). They take their bingo very seriously, so when the bingo caller does things like blow a whistle every time the number 2 comes up, half of the people bring along their own whistles to blow while half of them (my grandmother included) yell at the poor guy and tell him to speed it up. All it takes is a $3 wager for grown people to descend to the level of 5 year olds.

Ah, Spring Break in south Florida. Only 2 days until normalcy returns to my life.