Tonight we went to see the local AA baseball team play!

My family is loyal to the minor leagues, because we maintain that they're far more interesting to watch than the major leagues.

For example, in your average major league game, you're not too likely to see any of the following (much less all of them):

1. A run on four walks in a row
2. The entire audience on their feet cheering whenever the pitcher managed to throw a strike
3. 2 runs on a single fielding error
4. A ten-year-old as the main announcer
5. A bat, not just breaking but splintering, so hard that half of it ended up in the the outfield
6. A grounder down the first-base line being fumbled by the first baseman and bouncing foul, giving up a triple and a run
7. A live high school marching band and step squad
8. Three separate innings ending with bases loaded, full count, and two outs
9. More pitchers than innings
10. A foul into the stands, which landed so far away from where anyone was sitting that the 'crowd' had to goad the nearest person into going down and fishing it out from under the bleachers. (Okay, you might see that one at an O's game, but only in a particularly bad year.)
11. Little leaguers shadowing the pros on the field
12. Third base stolen on a ball. Twice.
13. A runner taking three bases - including home - due to the catcher repeatedly dropping the ball.
14. A live breakdancing contest between four twelve-year-olds to the tune of "Cotton-Eye Joe"

//this section of the post brought to you by all the cricket discussion I have been subjected to by Andy Zaltzmann on the Bugle. (If any non-Americans would like an explanation for any of the above, you are welcome to ask... except the break-dancing, I have no explanation for that.)

We also went to the National Electronics Museum, which was a lot more fun than I expected it to be, even if I'm still not sure I understand electrical potential. (It's possible I do understand it and it's just a very mushy concept. It may be time to pull out Physics for Poets again.) It's one of those old-fashioned museums that mostly an excuse for displaying an excellent collection of Stuff: there's everything from telegraph keys to an Enigma machine to a chronological display of vacuum tubes to an early microwave oven to a WWII communications truck, plus a lot of space program and aviation stuff (TRANSIT satellites? Look even more like UFOs in real life.) No Tesla coil though. It made me really want to write some good meaty scientifiction, while at the same time pointing up just how difficult it is for SF writers to keep up with current tech, much less predict the future. (Also, infrared mirrors=awesome.)