charlesbreland.com

lillis is of course quite a sweetheart, and as such she came up with an ingenious plan of having a surprise bday for me a week and a half after my bday so we could go to the Seinfeld show. i purposely didn’t do ANY looking at what was going on in atlanta so that i could be as surprised as possible by my birthday surprise. i had almost no inkling anything was up until we walked into Front Page News and there were a few tables of my friends there. she’s both sneaky AND thoughtful! here is a picture of us just as we’re walking in.

and here’s a wonderful self-portrait of the elder allvines

we were glad that rod and susanne could come and susanne and sue even chaparoned lillis and i to Seinfeld to ensure i didn’t do anything “untoward” when the lights went out in the Fox. and, of course, you may remember rod from such famous blog postings as “a rainey day in paris” or “charles and the giant camel.”

here are two lovely ladies. their cute smiles mask their extreme hunger!

here are trey and christina. trey is the reason i had some inkling i might be going to seinfeld. i mentioned i had no idea of any events that were going on in atlanta that friday….well, except for a phone conversation with trey that went like this me: “we should get together soon” trey:”i’m going to seinfeld on friday.” me:”well, lillis has a super secret surprise for me on friday.” trey:”um, well cool…..maybe you guys will go to seinfeld.” : )

here are lillis and sara. sara’s pregnant, but you can’t tell b/c this is more of a head shot. or a head and shoulders shot. anyway, you can’t see her abdomen.

and here we see kashi, nathan, susanne and sue. nathan looks almost too happy here. he must be up to something! oh, and congrats to kashi. she now has her masters degree. speaking of which lillis is considering one as well, but i don’t want to be like nathan and have my girlfriend have an impressive honorific whilest i have none. i may get an advanced degree out of spite.

oh, and here is the link to lillis’ photo album if you want to see all the photos she took.

http://picasaweb.google.com/lclewis831/CharlesBDaySurprise5208

as always, lillis is wonderful and thoughtful, and i was very grateful for the effort she put into pulling the evening together. btw, seinfeld was great, but i don’t recommend the 10PM show. the second half of his show was much better than the first half, but by then lillis was a vegetable, and i was shotgunning her coke in an attempt to stay alert. : ) oh, and chuck martin opened up for him and he was pretty darned funny as well. i won’t even mention what his jokes taught lillis : )

springtime in Atlanta is always beautiful, but this year even moreso. we didn’t have any late frosts but we did have nice weather with enough rain (for the first time in a couple of years). also, it’s been very moderate temperature-wise, so we’ve really gotten to get out and enjoy it a ton without sweating our butts off. actually two weeks ago i golfed with some friends at 7AM and it was 39 degrees when we teed off. #1, it led me to believe al gore is full of crap. #2, it made me want to burn a ton of fossil fuels making laps around 285 to increase CO2 levels. however, due to the extremely high price of gasoline, i decided to just wear a jacket instead.

anyway, lillis REALLY likes one of the dogwoods in piedmont park, so i snuck over and took some pictures of it one AM. they’re posted here.

when i grow up, i’m gonna be just like you!

first, i will not discuss this again. fantasy baseball is not a sport for nerds. i mean, look at our photo below, do we look like nerds to you? forget about it!!

yes, that photo captures the mugs of 9 of the 12 current managers in the youaremyfantasy.com baseball league. first a couple of notes, we bid adieu to andrew (who we never actually knew) this year, AND to one of the original league members (and copyright holder of the phrase “hey ladies, next smirnoff ice is on me”) BP, for whom the career demands of gunning for partner in a large consulting firm didn’t leave a whole lot of time to study box scores. anyway, you were missed BP.

so, the draft was in atlanta this year, owing to the fact that i had a TON of crap going on. this was just one of a slew of weekends in a row that was not my own. that said, it was one of the best drafts i can remember. we spent friday night at STATS just having a great time reminiscing, making fun of each other, and watching the NCAA tourney. STATS is really a great place to hang out. we had a whole room to ourselves and newcastle and red brick ale on tap.

the next day jason, ronnie and i went out to plumb the depths of our athleticism on the sand volleyball courts in the park across from my house. holy crap, the sand was not that deep when i was 22. anyway, we had a blast and then showered up for the braves game. we met our new centerfielder (mark kotsay) who was decidedly less girthy than our old centerfielder. i like him already, b/c as the rain began to fall pretty hard i yelled to the field asking if he needed a poncho. he turned and gave me a thumbs up (YES, i’m sure it was his thumb). i hope he isn’t disappointed i didn’t deliver on that poncho. anyway, we used the rain delay to go take some batting practice as immortalized here. note, there is equally embarrassing (or moreso) footage of me hitting, but since it’s my blog i will leave that out : )

actually, i would have included video of me, if i had any. the highlight for me was giving myself turf toe….brilliant!!

we then headed over for bowling where we learned that calf size is directly proportional to bowling score as ronnie averaged a 200. his team beat the crap out of ours as his score was supported by a high 100’s score from dietze. looking back, i wonder how i thought it was possible that missle mike might be a good bowler. also, shout out to larry not the legend, how may now be “the legend” after a kirk gibson/willis reed type bowling performance on 1 good leg. i really wish i had video of that : )

anyway, the draft that night was fun, even if my condo did end up smelling a little funny the next morning. it looked a little like jonestown with 4 guys sleeping in my den, but everyone survived the night.

my team looks stacked this season, although my draft strategy of building my team around pitchers with sketchy track records for getting injured has not paid off thus far.

thanks so much for everyone who came to town. while this year’s draft was a brief affair, i really enjoyed the heck out of it. look forward to seeing everyone again soon!