Hunger Games, Tigers Games and Easter, Oh My!

Did you have a good weekend? I know I did. Let's go back to Friday, shall we? I met up with a couple friends for dinner and a movie Friday night. This all came about because a week earlier my friend Timis said he had started reading The Hunger Games and wanted to see the movie after he finished. I told him I had just started it too and we agreed to both fly through the book and be done by last Friday so we could see the movie. Every time I talked to Timis during the week he said he was still reading along. I had nothing better to do last Sunday and promptly destroyed the first half of the book and used my lunch breaks to make quick work of the rest of it and finished by Wednesday. Side note, I'm not a great reader, and really haven't read a whole lot of books in my lifetime so for me to finish this book in a matter of days is a testament to how hooked I was and how easy of a read it is!

Long story short, when I met Timis and his wife for dinner at Chicago Pizza I was surprised to learn he hadn't even made it to the start of the games yet! We had a good laugh about this over dinner and had a good time catching up on the happenings of our lives and chatted about upcoming races.

We originally planned on seeing the 8:45 show but apparently everyone else did too and it was sold out, so we bought tickets to the 9:30 showing and jumped around the corner for a beer to kill time. I probably could have done without that last beer because in hindsight the shaky camera work of the movie combined with the cerveza wasn't a happy mix. It wasn't that  bad but I really was not all that happy with the first half of the movie and attributed it mostly to being buzzed and annoyed by how shaky the movie was. All in all the movie was okay in my opinion. Sadly I became the person I so much love to hate that when asked for an opinion on a movie the only thing you can say is "it wasn't as good as the book." Never in a million years did I want to be that guy but alas there I was. I enjoyed the movie for the most part but at the same time I was disappointed and the only reason I could come up with was there was no surprise to it. Instead of going into a movie with a vague idea of what would happen, I knew everything that would happen and a lot that didn't happen. I like to be surprised by a movie, not disappointed by what was left out. It actually has made me second guess whether I want to read the second and third books now or wait until after I see the movies, because let's be honest here, even after I see the movie I'll still learn a lot from the book that was left out from film.

Okay, off from my soap box. Because of the later movie time it was 12:30 by the time I got home and I still had to switch my laundry over so I would have shorts and socks for saturday mornings run.
I was up and out the door by 7am to meet my group for a long run, and while I was looking forward to the run, I was also desperately wanting to get it over with because after then run my family was heading to Detroit for the Tigers game!

I ended up only running ten miles because of time constraints, being tired, and the fact that I'm racing a half marathon this Saturday and didn't want to push it the week before.

After I showered up and got to my parents house, my mom, dad, sister, brother and his girl friend and I all loaded up into the truck and headed east to the D. We tailgated for a bit and then headed into the stadium for what ended up being a damn good game. As long as you aren't a Boston fan.

Saturday was my parents (yes both of em) Birthday and my dad turned 60 so we decided to take them to a game to celebrate. It was a perfect day, everything cooperated, the traffic, the weather and the outcome of the game! Cabrera and Fielder both connected for a pair of home runs each and Avila went yard as well! I'm so excited for baseball season to be here again!

Brother, Sister, and I

The Family

New Ginormous scoreboard!

Family that tailgates together, stays together!

The Birthday Couple!

Sunday we did the whole church thing, which was made interesting for once when the girl directly behind me passed out in the middle of the gospel! She's okay and I'm betting she's lucky it wasn't at one of those crazy big box churches! They might have thought she was possessed and needed to be saved...though this also might have livened things up from the typical mass...

After church we had a delicious lunch of pulled pork sandwhiches, cheesey taters, and some cole slaw. Not you're average Easter meal, but well received none the less! I also engorged myself on starburst jelly beans and sweedish fish! I somehow managed to make it all the way through lent with out eating candy and rewarded myself accordingly :-)

We followed lunch with a much needed nap and watching the Tigers game, which they won in fantastic come from behind, walk off home run fashion thanks to Avila! Did I mention I'm excited it's baseball season?

When the game finally ended I got to work on my car and fixed her up so I don't have to run to work anymore, but I am going to get a spare tube for my bike and start logging some miles on the road so that I feel comfortable enough that I can start riding to work.

Hope you all had wonderful weekends! I'm looking forward to this upcoming weekend too, I'll be racing the Martian Half Marathon in Dearborn, MI. Looks like it's back to the east side of the state!