Wednesday, June 27, 2007

A Suite Afternoon

Courtesy of KTSW's luxury suite and PEMCO's good relationship with the local broadcasting network our department had the chance to take the afternoon off and go and catch a day baseball game. It wasn't just any day baseball game either. The Boston Redsox were in town and the Mariners were going for the sweep. Diasuke Matsuzuka was pitching for the Redsox and was facing off against the other Japanese uber-star Ichiro Suzuki, so with Japanese paparazzi and American junk food in tow, it was meant to be a memorable afternoon.


Elle (My Guru), Kansas (The One Who Hired Me) and I all left the office together around 12:30 to make sure that we had plenty of time to find parking and to gorge as much food as possible before the 1:35 start time of the game. Everything was going swimmingly until we got to the gate to scan our tickets to enter the ballpark. When our tickets were scanned, the only message the staff's handhelds gave was "reprinted". They were as flummoxed as we were so as a result we were instructed to walk to the opposite side of the ballpark and to address the problem at customer services. After standing in line a good fifteen minutes the reward we got was a stumped look from the customer service rep. His computer told him that the tickets had been reprinted a couple of days ago and that our tickets were no good. He looked dubious when we explained our story to him. After a couple of calls to various supervisors, and with no explanation to us he wrote out this little sheet of paper and told us to go to the concierge's desk at the Suite Level.




Well, thankfully the whole episode ended anticlimactically when we were just able to walk right into the suite level with no problem at all. A couple of KTSW reps dropped by the suite around the 3rd inning and explained that they had double booked the suite and had had the tickets reprinted on Tuesday, thus making our tickets void and utterly retarded. Luckily they were able to move the other group to a different box. So, though the episode was very very lame we got to eat the other groups food as well as our own.




(There are 3 pizzas, beer, wine, soda, water, hot dogs, sausages, chicken breasts, hamburgers, popcorn, peanuts, and a pile of cookies that are not shown)

After wolfing down 2 plates of food in record time I finally sat down with a glass of lemon water and took in the beautiful view of the Seattle skyline from our suite.


As the first inning wore on I noticed, much to my delight, that those working in or on Qwest Field across the way were watching "People's Court" while plied their respective trades.


It must be nice to watch daytime television on a 40' screen at work.


The game went along at a pretty nice clip, but Elle and I found that it was much more boring being at the game without our better halves and usual social counterparts. Many of our coworkers ended up staying inside and just watching the game on TV while eating and drinking. What enthusiasm.


To make an exceedingly boring post short, the Mariner's ended up winning in extra-innings 2-1. Thus, the Mariners gloriously swept the Redsox, Ichiro won the Japanese smack-down by hitting an RBI single in the 3rd inning off of Dice-K (but sadly by not engaging in a martial arts showdown), and I won a Mariners jersey in a department drawing. Overall, between the food, the sights, the Mariner's win, and lack of work made this afternoon a splendid one after all.


(Ichiro just before getting his RBI single off of Dice-K)


(Myself and Elle - My, doesn't my face look gargantuan?!?!?!?!)


(From left to right - Jacque, Kansas, Gawain, K-Dawg)


(The fact that MySpace is Mr. Betancourt's favorite website is simply proof of the psychological horrors that take place in Cuba. Apparently he still thinks he's a 14 year-old girl in a training bra.)


(The Mariners jersey I won...lady luck was on my side)

(Raghu and his ridiculous amount of bling. Maybe they just do things differently in India.)





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