A Day in the Bronx

Hey folks,

It's the middle of a relatively slow, yet shortened work week here at The Hill. Tomorrow is my last day before an extended break to train for freshman Orientation! Come Thursday, the other Peer Mentors and I will be back for a week and a half to meet the Class of 2014.

But before I go, let me fill you in on the happenings a pretty cool weekend.

I actually had to head home this weekend because my Dad got tickets to a Yankees game on Saturday. It is now a longstanding annual tradition with my family. We started back in 1998 and, oddly enough, my first-ever Yankee game was rained out. Since then, we go every year to at least one game. If we're lucky, we also try and go to other ballparks as well, including Wrigley Field, Fenway Park, and Camden Yards.

So my two uncles, my dad, and I left for the ballgame around 8:45am. We stopped at an amazing place for breakfast: Duchess. It has been a tradition for us since we started. Duchess is best described as a type of fast-food diner popular in Southern Connecticut. So armed with home fried and hash browns, we continued into the Empire State for our meeting with the most successful team in all of sports.

We made it to the Stadium around 11am or so. We had some time to kill so we mosied on in to the stadium's Hard Rock Cafe for some drinks. I was pretty impressed with it. It wasn't that crowded and the service was great! Maybe it was also the fact that staring me right in the face was a wall filled with Bob Dylan memorabilia, including his leather jacket and used setlist.

After spending some time there, we made our way to our seats and promptly ordered up some hot dogs before the game started. It turns out it was "Military Appreciation Day" at the Stadium, so a military plane flew overheard and several paratroopers jumped out and landed on the field. The first one landed and then introduced the others as they fell. It was pretty cool. (Alright, so it was at this point that I was going to paste the two videos I took of the paratroopers coming in to the Stadium. Unfortunately, my computer does not care about my blog much at all and they won't upload. If I get it to work soon, then I'll put 'em up.)

Once the game started, it was pretty much all Yankees. Derek Jeter led off the bottom of the first with a home run (his first of two in the game) and later on Jorge Posada crushed a fastball into right field for a grand slam. Javier Vasquez pitched pretty decently and got the victory as the Yanks beat the Houston Astros 9-5. Below is a picture of the old Yankee Stadium, which is located across the street from the new one. Last year when I went, it was still standing. Now it is a mere pile of dirt...

On the way back home through Connecticut we continued our tradition and stopped at the famed Duchess for dinner. It was delicious. They have great hot dogs and cheeseburgers. I opted for the bacon cheeseburger. It did not disappoint! Anybody heading down to Southern CT, I highly recommend it!
I made it back to the house later that night and I was exhausted. My mom made me some food and I ended up crashing on the leather chair watching HBO on Demand.

All is right with the world.

Take care everybody! Coming up...Orientation!