a guy and a bee
a collection of random thoughts and ideas from me, her, and sometimes us
Tag Archives: nebraska
My Year in Sports
21 Orioles Games
1 Shorebirds Game
1 Ironbirds Game
2 Baysox Games
2 Nationals Games
1 Nebraska Football Game
2 Ravens Games
2 Elon BBall Games (at MD and at Navy)
1 Baltimore Grand Prix
From starting about this time last year, it’s been a fun year of attending sporting events. As a big baseball fan, I’ve always enjoyed going to numerous games a year at Oriole Park at Camden Yards, but the variety increased this year. Last October, I attended my first professional football game. Sat on the 50 yard line about 30 rows from the field. Fantastic time and nothing like corporate seats. Shortly after that, we made our way to Nebraska to see my wife’s dad. There we had the opportunity to attend the Nebraska vs. Missouri game, a great rivalry and exciting game. It was their 306th or 309th consecutive sell out. I have a separate blog post on here all about our trip if you are interested.
As the fall turned into winter, Elon’s basketball team travelled for the season to play teams locally and we saw them at Maryland and Navy around the holidays. We had a great alumni attendance at both games and certainly gave Maryland a run for their money. (Should I mention we also went to 1 or 2 Elon football games? They play 1-AA in football in the SoCon.)
At the end of the year, I found out for my birthday, Bee got me/us a partial game season ticket plan for the Orioles. Section 15 if you want to see us out there next year! Between FanFest and the season starting, I laid low with getting some autographs and collectibles. As spring started, I made it to my first opening day, with my buddy Dan, since I was in high school. We had a blast and were ready for what we thought would be a great season. Between season tickets, random Friday or Saturday games, giveaway nights or alumni games, I made it to at least 21 games. In between, we went to the Shorebirds and Baysox games for bobblehead giveaways. I also finally made it out to the Ironbirds stadium after 10 years for a work night at the the game. Hadn’t been to a minor league game in years. I also finally made it to Nationals stadium, once to see the Orioles and once with Bee’s family when they were in town. Nice place but I still enjoy OPaCY! Even wrangled in a batting practice ball at a Orioles game and a foul ball at a Baysox game. The ball hawks weren’t around at the time. Haha.
Once the season wound down, we got to the much anticipated Grand Prix. I made my way down to practice and had a good time. Lots going on and lots of energy. Neat experience but couldn’t go the rest of the weekend since we were going to the beach for the holiday.
And as we end up in October again, I got to go to another Ravens game for the weekend. Another corporate section and hospitality tent event. What a way to tailgate! This time it was Bee’s first professional football game and we won to boot. Talk about a loud, rowdy environment at M&T Bank these days.
I’m not really a fan of professional basketball and only a semi casual fan of hockey so who knows if I attend something like that soon but we shall see what the next year of sports brings. I know it will include lots of Orioles games though!
well that was a fun vacation
from atop the great smokeys!
so for the last year or so, my wife and i have been talking about a cross country trip this year and we had settled on a 3 week adventure and she had all the plans put together. after 3 days into the trip, i was having bad anxiety issues and we decided to turn around. we had made it from maryland to elon, nc and then to just out of knoxville, tn where we stayed in seiverville, which is just a few minutes from the great smokey mountains. our next destination was memphis.
weird! wonder works in seiverville
it was a frustrating experience because i thought i had gotten past my anxiety issues and would be fine. apparently not. as i have explained it others, it’s like walking on one leg when you are having anxiety flare ups and for me, the nausea related to it. you can limp around, but you know you aren’t right and you can’t fix it like you hope you would be able to. had i really wanted to lose 10 or 15 pounds by not eating properly, it would have been a good way to do it, but would have only gotten worse and me being miserable wouldn’t been enjoyable for the wife either. so we decided to turn around and went to the Outer Banks instead. having vacationed there all my life and a free place to stay allowed us to get to a place we knew would be okay. after a few days, i was feeling better and we enjoyed a week and a half at the beach. since it was a joint decision to not continue, i don’t feel like it was the wrong decision, but disappointed it’s how it ended.
sunset at the OBX
when we started out, we said we were going to go as far as we could go and that was what we did. ultimately, i am annoyed, frustrated, sad, disappointed, upset, and happy that we tried. i am disappointed for her more than anything because we were supposed to visit her dad in nebraska over this coming weekend for father’s day and that would have been a great time for her to see him since we last saw him in october. he will be out here july so we will at least get to see him soon.
pass and stow
upon returning to maryland from the beach, we took a couple day trips to annapolis and philadelphia to see America’s first Zoo as well as the Liberty Bell. if you haven’t seen the Liberty Bell, it’s smaller than you might expect but still worth a visit!
unfortunately, it’s back to work and telling them the same story. at least someone told me they were happy i was back.
i will post some more pictures of our trip and the fun adventure in the great smokey mountains, the Appalachian trail, gambling in Cherokee country, the weird towns of seiverville and gaitlinburg and more.
one year
This time last year I was rotating jobs and getting married all within the same week. What a way to go about things. Knocking out two big events in 6 days. Well here I am a year later and still in the job and more importantly, still married. It was a crazy year.
From the time we got married until now it’s been one thing after another. We went to another wedding, we made two trips to our alma mater were we serve on an alumni committee, we celebrated her birthday, enjoyed the beach, went to our Homecoming, another wedding, drove to Nebraska, went to a third wedding, ate lunch on the Mississippi River in Mark Twain’s hometown, celebrated the holidays with our family, celebrated my 28th birthday, laughed, cried, smiled, and just kept swimming.
This year, we have some fun plans too and we (read “I”) hope to document it with our cameras so we can show all our family and friends (and readers) what we are up to.Â
So with that, this Sunday, we will share in the newlywed tradition of eating your cake from last year and toast to an interesting year and exciting years to come. Happy Anniversary B! Love you.
Ps… why is it a tradition to eat freezer burnt cake anyway?
what are you thankful for?
every year at this time, we look back and think and talk about what we are thankful for. it is something that we need to do more often, but is often looked past in the daily routine of work, friends, social activities, etc. thinking about this year and what i am thankful for, it’s hard to just think of one thing, but most of all, i am thankful to be putting this wild year behind us.
the prior year ended with a wild finish and the 
2010 got started off the same way. 40 some inches of snow in february postponed her bridal shower and had many of us sweating bullets that it would melt away in time for our big day. well it did and almost 9 months ago, bee and i got married. it was everything we wanted it to be and more than we probably wanted to handle. we celebrated and quickly returned to reality with family issues that caused a large divide. lucky, she had me to lean on and we yelled, cried, screamed, ran away, and have started to move forward from those days.
summer came and went. some things changed and some things stayed the same. we spent some time at the beach, but not as much as usual and we even spent her birthday apart, although, she got to see fireworks in disney world on the 4th of july. it was her first time there and she loves fireworks and magic, so where else would one want to be. everyone i’ve talked to this year has talked about how fast it has gone by. well the same seemed to happen here. october came around and we drove to nebraska to see her dad. it was a great trip and brought up a lot of emotions. it was a very good, but trying trip and we got to see some more of this great country. (ps… i started choking on fritos while typing this, so i apologize if any spit is on this post 😉 )
so as we come to this thanksgiving and the holiday season and look back on this wild year, 
we can both be thankful for the experiences and thankful that the year is over. we are thankful that we are moving forward to new experiences and hopefully better ones. with that, i ask you, what are you thankful for?
oh yeah, i took the picture of the flower to the left at the omaha zoo in nebraska.
the great nebraska adventure
during the week of halloween, my wife and made a trip to see her father in nebraska. since i don’t fly, we drove from maryland to lincoln, nebraska. she refers to it as the great nebraska adventure. i refer to it as 2,655 miles in 7 days and 40 plus hours in the car. nonetheless, it certainly was an adventure.
having never left the east coast in my life and enjoying car rides, i assumed this trip to a neat way to see some more of this great country. well, we did see a lot of somethings and nothing of others. once we got past the middle of ohio, all we saw for endless hours were cornfields and silos. no wonder they called the midwest, the dust bowl. 
not only did we see cornfields and silos, we saw lots of roadkill. we counted over 45 deer and easily 100+ other types. everything from squirrels and raccoons to skunks and cats.
the people of nebraska are nice people. kind of what i would expect from good farmer working people; however, they do have some interesting places outside of maryland. in PA, we saw the Eat ‘N Park. there was Tom Raper’s RV’s in the Indiana or Illnois. And to save the best for last, in Lincoln, we saw the Git ‘N Split and the Kum ‘N Go. of course, there was also sinclair’s gas station, which had a large dinosaur in front of the sign.
while we out there, we also got to go to a nebraska football game. if there’s one thing they out there it’s nebraska football. it was the 309th consecutive sellout. stadium only holds 85,907 fans. pretty small really 😉
all and all, it was an interesting place and an interesting trip. we got to see her dad for the first time since march and we had an adventure. also got to go to 6 states i had never been to before!
hey there
a guy and a bee 