Last week I realized that I had no tickets to Shea for this week (Braves and Marlins series' on the homestand, hayooo!), and also realized that since it is THIS hot and humid, and since I have heard the term 'dog days' 10 times a day for a week now, then it can only mean one thing, Baseball Season's end is approaching -- and I only have tickets to *10* more games!!!  After my Annual Moment of Panic over this discovery had passed, I found myself immediately thrust into Must-Go-To-As-Many-Games-As-Possible Mode, which would be great except that this mode is coming into play at exactly the same time as I'm-As-Broke-As-A-Two-Wheeled-Tricycle Mode, and so therein lies my current quagmire of responsible decision making; pay the rent and tuition OR go to many more baseball games and drink beer and stuff?  Decisions, decisions... how will it all turn out?!  Only time will tell... :suspense!:

And so, now that attending games has become my primary (if a bit lofty) motivator for at least the next several weeks, I set about getting some tickets for the series opener against the Hated Braves.  Mets.com had surprisingly limited availability, but I'd seen some available on a message board that I read sometimes and so got myself a ticket to Tuesday's game against the Hated Braves.  Right on.

Now it's game day, and I'm allll ready!  Got my ticket (it's Upper Reserve BOX rather than my usual Upper Reserve... moving up in the world, woohoo!), and a fancy, vegetarian sandwich and fancy, vegetarian snacks for the game, and a radio walkman, and my one-eyed binocular thingy, and my Mets visor, and super comfy platform flip-flops with Mets orange on 'em, and I am alll set.  Then the phone rings and it's a text from a buddy wanting to know if I want to go with him to the game and sit on the Field Level.  Yep, that's right, FIELD LEVEL!  Faaancy!  What'll I wear??!!  Lookit me Mom, your little girl, going to the Field Level!  Yep, I am moving up in the world, I tell ya'!  And now I am DEFINITELY getting that Giant Foam Finger that I've wanted for so long, watchout Field Level, Miss Blue Sky is coming for yas!!

Got to the game with my buddies (shoutouts to Dave and Christian!), and wowwweee, so THAT's how the other half, er, other 1/9 is living, huh?  Faaancy!  And AWESOME, can't forget to add awesome, because those were easily the best seats I've ever had, tho of course I'd never been lower than Loge before, so yano, I'm easily impressed, I suppose.  Later in the game we even got an upgrade through my fancy buddy's fancy cousin with all of the fancy tickets, so we moved over to the fancy third-base side, right near fancy home plate, and with fancy waiter/waitress service and everything.  The beer took a long time to arrive, but was really cold; bonus!

I tried several different Dugout shops but nobody had the Giant Foam Finger I wanted, and then I saw the vendor walking around with a whole mess of them... Helloo Giant Foam Finger, we are together at last, hooray!  (Shoutout to Dave for shouting "Giant Foam Finger!!!" real loud, repeatedly, to assist in this effort, cuz see now THAT's a team player! thanks, Bro. =) )

The Giant Foam Finger and I fell in love at first sight, it was like magic!  But then I got to know it a little better and realized that, well, the foam being used to produce this item is, well, not particularly pleasing to the touch.  Ok, so you feel kind of icky on my smooth, fancily-moisturized skin, but I still love you, Giant Foam Finger... Let's go Mets!  :proudly waving Giant Foam Finger around:  After a while I got the hang of the thing and here is my method of hanging with the Giant Foam Finger (I should add that while it's not love anymore, there is still a deep, DEEP connection between us -- Shoutout to my GFF!): 

1. The Giant Foam Finger makes a nice little seat cushion, so when not in use, well, basically I'm sitting on it.  This will be more fun when I'm back in UR, since the seats up there stay down, while the FL seats spring back up when you stand, which kind-of inhibited my GFF action a bit on this particular night.
2.  When a play is about to go down, get ready to slip GFF stealthily onto hand and in the same motion get up off of the seat and start waving at a moments notice.  (<-- trickier than it sounds.)
3.  Play is going down, and something positive has happened, perform tricky GFF implementation maneuver and start waving that GFF like you mean it!
4. Play is over (or did not go in our favor), stealthily return GFF to seat and sit on it in one quick, seamless motion.  (This took a few tries, but I got it down.  I'm coordinated like that, yano.)

The game was very fun, except for the fact that we lost, of course, but still I had a great time, as always.  And although I'd wanted to keep score, there was just too much going on, between the seat upgrades, and all of the beers, and learning to use my Giant Foam Finger, and staring down Shawn Green and David Wright with my one-eyed binocular thingy, and arguing with my friends over their stupid back-seat team management assertions, I just didn't have the time.  And I'd made up fancy new double-sided scoresheets that say "Miss Blue Sky's Scorecard!" on the top, and everything.  Oh well, next time.

Bummer to lose to the Hated Braves, of course (I don't really hate them, but feel compelled to call them that just the same... I actually find them to be a great team with many players that I respect, or have respected over the years), but Ollie was off, and the offense off, plus the Braves are a great team, so sometimes it goes that way.  Ah well...  :sulking briefly:

Hernandez and Smoltz tomorrow night, wheeee!  And although I will likely be "watching" most of the rest of the seasons games on stupid Lameday while listening on WFAN and then later actually watching the games on mlb.com on-demand, I have a whole plan for making this lots and lots of fun (elaborate trays of snacks and wine, candles, keeping score, having all the stats at my fingertips via Lameday, etc.), so I'm still feeling all good about it.  See that?  Lost the series opener against Atlanta, but still perky.  You guys are right, I AM amazing!

Let's go Mets! :waves Giant Foam Finger:

[Number of times the word 'fancy' is used in this reveiw: 12 (if you count 'faaancy' and 'fancily.'  That might be a record!]