To the Garden! Twice.

Today seemed to be dedicated to the Atlanta Botanical Garden. We're doing our best to get everything we can out of our membership and I have to say we're doing a pretty darn good job of it. Today was playgroup for Patty and Gabe and for something different the group decided to meet at the Botanical Garden. Today it was just Patty and Gabe, Diana and Jake, and Maria and Zoe and they all had a great time exploring the Children's Garden. They found some impressive bullfrogs and some that were still in the tadpole stage. They were all enjoying things so much that they ran over the normal playgroup end time of 4:00 and didn't break things up until 4:45. On such a beautiful day, who could blame them?

That made things interesting, however, because Matt's softball game was at 6:00. Of course traffic decided not to cooperate, it never does when time is short. Matt started the game wearing his khaki work pants (Matt would like to point out that they were actually stone color, not khaki tan) and his brown cap-toed work shoes. Even though the mighty Intimidators started out down by a six runs after the first inning to the boys from Flight Test, they battled their way back behind a massive fourth inning. Matt was the last run across the plate in the sixth inning when the team had scored enough runs to invoke the "12 runs after 6 inning" mercy rule. For the day, Matt was three for three with two singles, a double, two walks, one RBI and three runs scored. The final was 19-7 and it turned out to be a really fun game, especially after Matt got a chance to change into shorts and cleats during the third inning (Patty and Gabe made it in time for the game, Matt just didn't get a chance to change until then). It felt really good to win again and even our record at three and three. The first half of the season is now over and we'll start the second next week.

After the game the Angles boogied back down to Midtown to go back to the Botanical Gardens. Why? Well, because it's the last Wednesday of the month! Every month on the last Wednesday the Gardens has Cocktails in the Garden and they stay open until 9:00. It costs six dollars for members even to get in, but that price includes one free cocktail and free munchies. Tonight they featured a drink called the "Loose Caboose" in honor of the train exhibit going on there right now. The food was some really tasty shrimp and one of our favorite desserts in the entire city: chocolate soup from Soto Soto! The chocolate soup alone would have been more than worth the $6! Mmmm... chocolate soup... garlgarlgarl...

Before we left Patty wanted to show Matt where she and Gabe had hung out over in the Children's Garden. We walked up to the entrance to it (it's sort of separated from the rest of the ABG) and the gate was closed. We went to the front desk and asked if it was closed, but the woman there said no and that we should go over if we wanted, only to be careful because the lighting isn't very good over there. As we were crossing the bridge over the parking lot (it's like a kiddie overpass), the high-strung security guard that we had noticed earlier barking orders into his walkie-talkie saw us and yelled brusquely up from the parking lot that the Children's Garden was closed. Matt answered, loudly, that that was not what they had told us at the front desk. The guard went off to check and Patty and Matt went on their way, shrugging their shoulders. We breezed through, checking on the frogs (still there) and were on our way out when the guard materialized. Matt had bet Patty that he wouldn't apologize to us if we saw him again and Matt now owes some money to his wife. He turned out to be really nice and told us that the woman at the desk wasn't aware that there was virtually no lighting in that part of the ABG and they had decided to close it so no one would get hurt. He didn't order us to leave or anything, but we were already on our way out and didn't want to press our luck. The whole experience made us chuckle.

Patty and Matt have really found themselves exhausted the past couple of days and it has hit us quite hard today. After getting home we pretty much only did the basics (all involving Gabe) and are ready to hit the bed. Gabe has been waking at strange times during the night and throwing off everyone's sleep schedule, which is making for a lot of drooping eyes around the Angle household. Matt had to resort to *gasp* chocolate during the day at work today to give him a shot of energy. We know that things will settle down eventually, but we've got a lot of work to do before we get there. We're looking forward to it, actually.

Sorry that we still are unable to put up any pictures. Matt looked at the USB cable that Chip decided to bite with the eye of an electrical systems corrective action engineer and noticed that the little chomper even bit through the metal shielding that wraps the actual wires inside the cable. Very impressive! Rest assured that we are still taking pictures and will post them as soon as we can get a new cable.