Don’t you hate it when you can’t sleep, knowing full well that you need to? :)

I suppose that means I’m ready to go home, having been in Longview, TX, since July 15. I can personally attest that twin babies cure insomnia.

In Longview, 2 hours east of Dallas, there is but one place to play NTN Trivia, at the Sports’ Page bar. There are about 4 or 5 regulars there now, with millions of points, that have played for years. Several of them have played for so long, they consider it bad form when you celebrate to yourself after getting a hard answer. People do not go there for food, and I highly recommend you eat beforehand or bring food. They charge $4 for 6 wings, and the bartender will not recommend them. The cheapest item is a $2.50 hot dog. I think they are only slightly more expensive at Ameriquest Field in Arlington. I’ll usually drink a couple of Michelob Ultras just to keep revenue going to the place, and then settle with a pitcher of ice water until the beer wears off. The trivia lords over there will share answers and such, so it’s cool if you’re there to pick up NTN points rather than see if you can post a high score. These guys have pretty much memorized all the answers. :) The smoke is thick and will actually irritate nonsmoker lungs after two hours or so.

This trip hasn’t all been beer and free popcorn. I did get to catch a game at said Ameriquest field, making it my 6th out of a possible 29 stadiums. It rained in the middle of the 8th, and I took that as my cue to go home. Whenever I visit a baseball stadium, I get a baseball with a logo of that team for myself, and I get outfits for the kiddies. I try to visit ballparks while I’m on company trips so that I don’t have to do them on my personal dime later. Visiting all the ballparks would be a cool retirement trip. If I were asked to rate my favorites so far, they’d have to be:

  1. Kaufman (Royals!) Stadium in Kansas City - no obstructions from the seats, cool fountains, best landscaper in the business, classic old school organ
  2. Coors Field in Denver - company had excellent seats on the 1B side, wonderful Rockies landscaping in center right
  3. New Comiskey Park in Chicago - first park where I saw a jumbotron. Yeah, it’s called U.S. Cellular now.
  4. Enron Field/Astros Field/Minute Maid Park in Houston - probably the worse price/value ticket so far. The roof is fine if already closed, but if it starts to rain during the game, it does no good because you are soaked if you are in the left field seats and rained on for the 15 minutes it takes to close the roof.
  5. Ameriquest Field in Arlington - our seat on the 1B side did not have a good view of the scoreboard over Right Field, and there isn’t much for us to watch
  6. Cinergy Field in Cincinnati (they replaced it last year with Great American, thankfully. Will have to go there now!)

I have rented THE ugliest car on the planet, the Pontiac Aztek. The car is comfortable enough, but the rear hatchback window is split into a top window and a bottom window, with a spoiler in the middle. The spoiler is just at the right height in my case to block the headlights of cars behind me…so I can’t see them at night! I would never buy this car.