Yankees

Yesterday's weather enabled us to spend the entire day on Lake Allatoona. We met the R's and the B's (the B's are also Douglasville dwellers...PR and CR met them at a bar and it was quickly shared that they all hail from Indiana, like Craig and me) early enough in the morning to get lathered up in spf 15 or 30, depending on the degree of risk willing to be taken by each respectively. Craig opted for 15 against the recommendations of the R's, who were wearing 30 the weekend before but their skin still ignited. He got fairly lucky and wound up with one of those sweet pink toasted colors instead of the glaring red we've both battled after afternoons thinking we weren't getting any sunshine. Sun's pretty vicious in Georgia. Anyway, we had a great time. The R's brought Corona, the B's brought Sol, and we brought the ever-loved Miller Lite. All the beer we had didn't last us the whole day, even with pregnant CR not drinking! Beer goes down a lot easier when you're in the sun and chattering with friends and having a splendid Sunday. AB was making me laugh like a lunatic because she wondered if the boat was going to capsize, she confessed to Not Knowing Whether Or Not She Might Get Sea Sick, and when she and I finally resigned to jumping in the lake to break the proverbial seal, she very maternally explained, as I tucked back into my bathing suit top, why she had selected the "sport" suit instead of the regular bikini suit for the outing. This tip was reaffirmed wise when later, Craig, drunk and flirtatiously jabbing me as if to push me off the boat, managed to accidentally jab the bikini top right off its goods. I shrieked like a girl and said something to the effect of, Get away from me, I don't want to see your face! Admitted over reaction to an innocent and unintentional blunder. The B's confirmed that they would be happy for us to join them for an Atlanta Thanksgiving. That will be a relief, to stay in town for that holiday after all the traveling Craig and I are doing together and apart through September. I believe we will go to the B's, do the turkey thing, stuffing thing, and then the other B Thanksgiving tradition which is a hockey game...that will be a great time.*We have known the R's pretty much since we started seeing each other, Craig and I. We met them in Detroit in 2001: PR worked with Craig and me at the airport, then PR was transferred to Hartford (after marrying CR in Terre Haute, IN...a wedding which Craig and I both attended but not together as each other's dates). PR and Craig have since worked in Hartford together, Syracuse, and now Atlanta. We have gone to NYC twice with the R's. Last trip was Labor Day weekend of last year, at which time PR led us there believing we had tickets to see the Yankees 3rd row behind home plate. We drove together from Syracuse to the City, stayed at the Carlton on Madison (newly refurbished and gorgeous for the rate, we loved it!) and hit Manhattan that Friday for what turned into a free dinner in Little Italy (PR went inside to check on our reservations and when he emerged, he announced that his subcontractor buddy had called ahead and arranged to pay for us!)...and after a fabulous (free!) Italian meal with wine and Italian spring water and the works, we were then suggested by the aforementioned subcontractor (via telephone call) to head to Eugene, where some sort of related-to-subcontractor-buddy individual would ensure our entry. We pulled up to the curb in our cab and hopped out and there, PR was again treated like a V.I.P. and it was walkie-talkied that the "R Party" had arrived. Partied like rockstars, crashed in our respective rooms at the Carlton, and Saturday morning we would wake to get ready for our trip to the Bronx to see baseball 3 rows back. That is, until PR rubbed his hung over eyes and really looked at those tickets to find that they had been for the previous day's game. Damn! But we hit the Bronx, anyway, and wound up sitting in the out field. PR managed to order the one beer out of a sleeve of who knows how many whose plastic rim was lined with tiny NY Yankees symbols. This, said concession man to PR, meant that all of PR's subsequent beers would cost him the Low Low price of 5 dollars, if memory serves me correctly. Regardless, PR paid way less than Craig and I for our ballpark beverages. Yankees game followed by Mexican dinner in the Village, pitchers of margaritas, and a drunken attempt at dining-and-dashing on mine and Craig's and PR's parts...meanwhile, sober CR calmly mitigated our disgust with the gradual decline of our waiter's service and we wound up paying the due amount for our dinners. Glad CR was able to persuade us to act like moral upright citizens in the midst of a lovely weekend in the City. Sober myself, I would have never participated in such a stunt! And that's the truth.