Silver medal.

In other words, being second best.  In the world of baseball and any other team sport, it means losing.  Yeah.  The Dodgers have been doing that a little bit too often lately.  Let's just say the Dodgers are 1-4 for the five games I have attended this season.  The starting pitchers have been excellent, but the offence is another story.  To illustrate, earlier this month one of our pitchers gave up one hit in eight innings and we still lost the game 1-0.  Pathetic.  The offence has been so bad lately that I find myself cheering for every hit like it was a home run.  After one of their losses, I heard one of the hosts of Dodger Talk say the Dodgers got the silver medal.  It makes it seem less bad.  But I still have faith.  There's a lot of baseball left to play.  And they won tonight!!!!!!!!!!  So much losing makes winning so much better.  Ha.  However, I'd still rather they win more than lose.  Jerry Sands hit his first career grand slam too!  It was great!!!!

The other day, the video highlight on the Dodger homepage was captioned, "Barajas jacks a solo dinger."  What?!  It was obviously a video of his home run.  I just found it entertaining that this caption out of context would be utterly confusing.  I do not understand why someone felt the need to use that caption instead of the simple "Barajas hits a solo home run."  Ha.

The last game I went to was last Thursday against the Giants.  The Giant's starting pitcher had a record of 0-6 coming into the game.  It was the bottom of the ninth.  Dodgers were down 3-0.  The starting pitcher was still pitching.  Losing is one thing.  Losing a complete game shut out by the starting pitcher who has not won a game during the season and is a Giant is quite another.  Also, losing when there are obnoxious Giants fans in your vicinity, doesn't make me very happy.  Anyway, we're down by three.  Bottom of the ninth.  Bottom of the lineup.  The first two guys up to bat get out.  Barajas is up and hits a little blooper that falls right in between the shortstop and the left fielder.  Man on first.  Still two outs.  Sands (the one who hit the grand slam tonight) gets up and doubles to deep center.  One run scores.  Dodgers still down by two with two outs.  They take the starting pitcher out.  Hallelujah.  At least if we still lose, it won't be a shut out and the pitcher won't have pitched a complete game.  The Giants bring in their closer, Wilson.  He's the "Fear the beard" guy.  Supposedly really good.  He proceeds to walk the next two batters which loads the bases.  Two walks!  In a row!  (I was on the edge of my seat/standing the entire time.)  We finally get to the top of our lineup.  The count is 2-2.  Jamey Carroll hits a line drive to right field.  It's dropping.  It looks like a hit.  This could potentially tie up the ball game.  But no.  The Giants' right fielder makes a diving catch to end the game.  Brutal.  We were so close.  

Yes, my blog is turning into a commentary on the Dodgers.  Sorry.  It's summer.  In other news...

Summer Goal #1:  Finish the rest of my Bath & Body Works blazin' blueberry cosmic cool body splash.  That's what it's called.  Not lying.  And the name is not capitalized on the bottle (side note directed at grammar Nazis out there including myself).  I received it as a gift for my tenth birthday.  I have at least a third of it still.  I think it's time to finish it.  Let me know if you could use some.  I'm very willing to share.  :)

Summer Goal #2:  Get Grant to say that he loves me.  He's my two-year-old brother for crying out loud!  Shouldn't he love me?!  He tells my dad all the time that he "just loves [him] so much."  But when I ask him if he loves me, he says no.  In fact he often says he hates me.  Ha.  What a kid.

I babysit two precious (most of the time) kids from my stake for about two hours everyday.  The four-year-old boy (who is in the Darling Duckling preschool class in case you were wondering) really likes numbers and telling me exactly how much different people (most often family members)/things weigh.  Don't worry, he has no concept of how much they actually weigh.  He also likes to tell me the ages of his family members.  One day he said, "A long time ago my dad was 20.  Now he's about 21."  This is probably one of those "you had to be there" moments, but if you know the kid, it would be hilarious.  The things that come out of his mouth.   

I saw a bumper sticker the other day that read, "Land of the free because of the brave."  How true.  Thanks to all the unbelievably courageous men and women out there who put their lives on the line to protect this great country.  I will be forever grateful.

I'm sure you've all heard of the recent tornado in Joplin, MO as well as all the other tornadoes in the Midwest.  These poor people.  There were something like 47 tornadoes in the United States on Sunday alone.  Anyway, I was listening to the news on the radio and they were talking about the Joplin tornado and how the 200 mph gusts were "stripping homes from their foundations and the leaves off the trees."  I don't know about you, but the "stripping homes from their foundations" gets the point of major destruction across pretty well.  The whole "leaves off trees" part is not extremely necessary in my opinion.  I'm almost positive people could care less about the leaveless trees when they don't have a home.  Just a thought.

That's all.  :)  Sorry for this being painfully long.