Tommy at his first Ms game

3 weeks, 2 days oldTommy's big sister enjoyed the game & her moose card too

First Moose Sighting of the Season

He was hanging out in the section just above us.

Iris wasn't sure what to think but she definitely was keeping an eye on him

(photos courtesy of Kris Chick)

April visitors

Here are some way way overdue pics of our April visitors

Here's Iris with her Uncle Jack. His real name is John but I always call him ML.
Here they are playing Wii.
She & Uncle Jack bowled 6 straight strikes together--
I bet you didn't know she was such a good bowler!

ML came up with his son Reed (youngest of 3).
Iris hopes to meet her other 2 cousins Will & Luke soon!My mom (Iris's Memere) also visited in Apriland here's one of Iris and Irene at one of our early season Mariner games at Safeco Field

Our friends Lorraine and Rob from Ireland also visited us in April--
I'll post pics of their visit soon!

Iris Win Streak Over, Freddy has bum knee, new Weezer!

Iris' win streak is over at 5 games, as the Mariners blew a 2-0 8th inning lead and lost to the A's 4-2 on Sunday. We think the good luck string was broken when we decided to leave just before the A's 4-run rally started. It was raining pretty good & the roof wasn't closed so we decided to head out early, since the Ms were up 2-0 in the 8th. By the time we got down to the lower level, the A's had loaded em up with no outs and then took the lead. Kris texted me that we better get Iris back up to the seats, but by the time we got back to the upper deck the A's had scored 4 times, and it was pretty much over. The Ms went down meekly in the 8th & 9th and Iris' unbeaten lifetime record was history.

Here's the Martel family at the gameLook - I found my thumb!

We had more bad news on Sunday as Fred the cat woke us up with a very bad limp - he could barely move & wasn't putting any weight on his right rear leg. I feared the worst, since we already know that he has arthritis in his lower spine, just above his hip. I gave him a good brushing Sunday night & noticed he didn't flinch too badly when I was near his hip, though his foot seemed very sensitive. Since our vet is only open Tuesday-Saturday, I thought that we'd take a wait and see approach and see how he was on Monday, since he seemed a little better Sunday night than he had been that morning.

We got home from work last night & he was still limping pretty badly so I decided to bring him to the emergency vet, which is open overnight when all the other vets are closed. I hate going to that place - seems like a lot of the animals that get brought in there have taken their last ride. But it went OK for Freddy--after a couple xrays and an exam, his diagnosis is just a $350 sore knee. They gave him some narcotics to help with the pain and prescribed lots of rest, which Freddy is only too happy to comply with. We still don't know what happened or how he hurt himself but the extra lbs he carries around most likely had a lot to do with it.

That's enough bad news. here's some good - Weezer has a new album coming out in June - you can stream their new single Pork & Beans on weezer.com - I like it!

Iris: 5 months old, April visitors, hospital visit

1. Iris turned 5 months old on Monday 4/21. Happy 5 months, baby!

2. We've had a couple rounds of visitors this month. Jim's brother ML (AKA Jack, John) and his youngest son Reed were up here from the SF bay area the weekend of April 5-6 , and our friends Lorraine and Rob from Ireland were here from Saturday evening until this morning. We had a great time with both sets of visitors. I'll post pics as soon as I can.

Here's one of Iris at last night's Mariners 4-2 win over Baltimore. Iris' career record at Seattle games remains perfect.
She's 3-0 at Mariners games and 2-0 at Sonics.

3. Iris has been eating more as she's grown, and Irene's been struggling to keep up with her, so we accepted the inevitable and I tried giving her some formula yesterday when I was home with Lorraine & Rob. Only I didn't give her a small amount to start--I gave her a full bottle of the same Similac (blue label) formula that she had a few bottles of in the hospital her first week.

It was a bad idea starting her off with so much formula when she hadn't had it in months--she vomited it all up & then it seemed that she had an allergic reaction to the cow's milk protein in it, according to her doctor's best guess. After vomiting her lips turned bluish-purple and the area around her mouth was kind of white and felt cool to the touch, so we took her to the hospital to be sure she was OK.

They tested her oxygen saturation level as soon as we got there and it looked fine, so even though it was pretty scary it turned out to be nothing serious. She also saw her regular doctor after the hospital & seemed back to her usual self after a nice long nap--see the photo above from last night's game for proof.

She's now going to try a hypo-allergenic version of the formula, which has much less cows milk proteins in that so we're hoping that'll do the trick. We'll start her off with just 1 ounce and see how that goes--more news later & more photos soon I promise.

Excellent Analysis here

I wish I could take credit for writing this breakdown of the Mariners recent meltdown, but it's from the Seattlest.com blog:

The Mariners. WTF?

Well, that was spectacular. From the heady days of August 25th, when the M's were three up in the wild card and only one back in the division, had won two straight in Texas, when we were all excited about Blue-za-palooza or whatever the fuck it was...to now, after 11 losses in 12 games, when we're all pretty much in wait 'till next year mode.

You've all seen the boat sink, here are the numbers.

August 25th-September 5th

Team pitching:
100 2/3 IP, 138 H, 20 HR (!), 5.81 ERA. Opp BA .334, Opp SLG .550

Team batting:
400 AB, 41 R, 6 HR, 22 BB, 70 K, OBP .309. 3.4 runs per game.

For a little perspective, no team's had an ERA that bad since the 109-loss, 1996 Detroit Tigers, and no team's averaged so few runs per game since the 107-loss, 1988 Baltimore Orioles.

So, in the midst of a pennant race, the M's reverted to being an epochally bad hitting and pitching team. Nice!

Reporters asked John McLaren what has to change after yesterday's game.

"We'll see what we're made out of, how about that? We'll see who steps to the plate."

Who has to step up?

"We'll start with the manager and work our way through the whole team."

The M's clamber up onto the shores of Detroit tomorrow, where they'll throw Miguel Batista against Justin Verlander. The Yankees, meanwhile, fly to the friendly town of Kansas City, where Gil Meche stands between them and reducing their magic number to 20.

Weaver Makes His Sad Face

Jeffy only went 4 innings in last night's 8-0 drubbing from the Angels. I am doing the unprecedented, and hereby revoking the Schrute buck he earned a few weeks back, leaving him with a grand total of zero Schrute bucks, a 2-10 record, and an ERA of 6.32 for the season.

I looked it up and he was 3-10, 6.29 (thru 16 starts--the same number he's had here) when the Angels gave up on him last year. So he was actually one win better & had a marginally lower ERA than he has this season--and they dropped him. When will Bavasi do the same? I'm guessing never, since that would require the Ms management to actually do something mid-season other than trade a guy like Mateo.

How can a team that thinks it's playoff ready have a 2-10 guy in its starting rotation? When will Bavasi be fired? These are the kinds of questions I'd like to know the answers to.

Lastly, here are the probables for the Sox-Ms series this weekend, according to the Boston Globe:

Friday, Aug. 3
Jon Lester (Red Sox) vs. Horacio Ramirez (Mariners)

Saturday, Aug. 4
Daisuke Matsuzaka (Red Sox) vs. Jarrod Washburn (Mariners)

Sunday, Aug. 5
Curt Schilling (Red Sox) vs. Miguel Batista (Mariners)

Looks good on paper but you'll get no predictions from me--I know how bad the Sox play in Seattle. They've lost their last 8 games at Safeco.

Sox Swept! & NBA Draft tonight

What the hell??!! It's gotten ridiculous around here. The sox come to town and lose to the Mariners every game, and that just the way it goes. They've now lost 8 in a row at Seattle, which is no fun for me or Eddie or the rest of the Sox fans out here. I'm just glad the rest of the AL east is so awful this year, and that we still have a 9 game lead after a brutal June travel schedule that included 2 west coast swings in a 3 week period.

Thanks to Irene too, for noticing the Sox were playing at home when we were going to be in NH over Memorial Day weekend--we got to see them win a game this season.

The Sox will be back in August, and hopefully Terry Francona will remember to send up a pinch hitter next time we're in an 8th inning, tie game, 2 on, 2 out situtation. He didn't seem to remember he could do that yesterday & sent up SS Julio Lugo, mired in an 0 for 31 slump or something like that, who managed to turn a 3-0 count into a strikeout. End of "rally", end of sox last best hope to at least take one of the 3 games this week. And then when Piñeiro came in to pitch the 11th, everyone in the place knew the game wouldn't last much longer.

Tip of the cap to Ichi - he recorded 11 put outs on fly balls yesterday - only 1 shy of the all time record. Not that I enjoyed a single one of them, but he is a great player. Too bad for all the Ms fans that this is the final year of his contract & the team doesn't seem to be very interested in re-signing him. I just hope he's not wearing pinstripes next year.

NBA draft is tonight - Sonics have #2 pick, celtics the 5th. Smart money says the sonics will get Kevin Durant but you never know - maybe Portland will take him & the Seattle/Las Vegas/OK City Sonics will have Greg Oden for the next 10-12 yrs. Weirder things have happened. I hope Jeff Green ends up on the Celts but they're probably going to take Yi, the 7footer from China, described by the sports guy's dad as the Chinese Brad Lohaus. Hooray!

Red Sox in town

Tonight starts a 3-game series with the Red Sox in town. Of course, Jim plans to go to all 3 games. Tonight it'll be Jim and Keith (a former Amazon who now lives in VA). I get to suffer through the loud obnoxious Sox fans (including Jim) on Tuesday night. The bummer is Wednesday's game; Daisuke is scheduled to pitch and I'll be stuck at work. It's a day game starting at 1:35PM.

Considering how much talk there's been about Daisuke, there's no mention of him pitching here this week. Our lame newspapers have been occupied by the return of Griffey Jr. It was great seeing him back in Seattle, but we need to stop being so nostalgic and start focusing our energy into fixing the Mariners. Feierabend (who the hell is this guy?) is scheduled to pitch for us; his record is 1-2 with a 8.20 ERA. Though I'll miss the game on Wednesday, I don't think I can suffer through a Sox win.

Weaver is da man!

hey - to all the haters and naysayers out there who have been on Jeff Weaver's case this season, people just like me, in other words, he got win #1 last night - a complete game 4 hitter against the powerful Pittsburgh Pirates!

for this magnificent start, I'm awarding Jeff one Schrute buck

Even Less Shocking

I've been singing the praises of Mariners Fan Favorite Jeff Weaver since his first start this season. He continued his perfect start today, and is now 0-6!! The good news for Ms fans is that he lowered his ERA to 14.56 with a quality outing today--only 6 earned runs in 5 innings pitched! Sweet! He's gonna break through for that first W any time now

Here he is almost getting Magglio Ordonez out!

The rematch of Ichiro and Daisuke

It was exciting to see Daisuke pitch to Ichiro; even the Red Sox fans were on their feet for the first few pitches. (It was a bigger night for Felix and his one-hitter.) If you didn't watch the game tonight, check out the highlights.