I was supposed to bring a coworker out golfering for the first time, but he couldn't make it, so it ended up being just myself and JP at Theo Wirth. Made a few good swings and some awesomely bad ones; I've been a bit frustrated with my inability to get appropriate distance out of my irons [which is, of course, all I play with], but some of that difficulty evaporated during the round when I whacked the bejesus out of a couplea balls. That particular shortcoming was replaced with a certain aiming dysfunction, however, as I pulled the long ones way off to the left. It seems I need to find the Middle Way. To remain in the Buddhist vein, I tried to stay conscious of the Zen Buddhist principle of Beginner's Mind during the round. I'm certain that the subject was exhausted a long time ago, but it seems that certain Buddhist ideas do pair well with golf, as lame as it is to apply an ancient Eastern religion [is it a religion?] to a snooty Western sport [is it a sport?].

There were four unused season ticket seats at work, which fell into my hands. I tried to wrangle up three folks to accompany me, but only JP was available [self-employed chums are great, try to get some]. Happily, we were able to magically transmogrify the extra tickets into a sum of cash, not unlike as if they were straw, and either JP or myself was... the miller's daughter? Actually, let's forget that entire thought. The upshot is that prior to the game, we wandered over the sidewalks outside the Dome like a couple of nervous seventeen-year-old suburban kids who had come into the city to buy some drugs, until we found an individual willing to part with a number of dollars that I felt was adequate in exchange for the tickets. That individual turned out to be a scalper, and he was apparently able to "move" the "product", as they say in the industry [probably not], since an elderly couple came along to occupy the other two seats. After the game we presented ourselves at McCormick & Schmick's, and exchanged the newly-acquired dollars for toothsome portions of the Ocean's Bounty [tilapia, cod, and oysters].

It turned out to be an excellent game; Santana gave up one over seven complete, and struck out eleven. Can nothing stop that man? As league leader in all of the big three pitching stats, he's on track to win the Cy Young for the second consecutive season. His seventeen wins are only one better than Garland's, Halladay's, and Wang's sixteen each, but his ERA of 2.84 is nearly a half-run better than second-place Halladay's, and at 219 Ks, he's racked up thirty-eight more than second-place Bonderman. It's similar to the situation he was in at the end up last year, dominating in ERA and Ks, but his record was actually slightly worse than that of Roger Clemens, and still the vote was unanimously in his favor. If the numbers stay where they are for his last few starts, he's a shoo-in.

At the game, JP temporarily parked his bag of chips upon the unoccupied seat in front of us, and when its owner [pictured] returned, he picked them up and decided to hang on to them awhile. Apparently, in his life, it is a common occurrence for bags of chips to magically appear, for he seemed quite content simply to clutch them without questioning their origin. "Mana from heaven" was the phrase that JP used. I found this situation endlessly hilarious. It wasn't until some time later that the gentleman realized what he was holding, and inquired of his neighbors as to the bag's ownership. JP, being habitually unable to quell his decency, chimed in that the chips formerly were his, but that he didn't want them, and they ended up with a kid in front of us. If they were my chips, I would have sat silently to see if any more entertainment could be squeezed from the confusion.