Hi, everyone.  It seems like I haven’t blogged in ages!  I’ve got a good excuse though.  I’ve been spending most of the past few weeks working on my thesis… yes, yes, I’m in grad school and academics needed to take priority before baseball season got here.  But, as of today I have completed the first draft of a forty-two page, more than 12,000 word paper and I am submitting it to my thesis chairperson tonight.  Whew.  So, that’s why I’ve been notably absent from the blogosphere as of late.

But all that changes as this evening I will be packing my bags for a weekend trip to Arizona!  Woo-hoo!  We’re leaving tomorrow morning to make the six-hour trek to a couple of dales… Gen and Scott, to be exact.  Two cars, six people, and the destination: SPRING TRAINING!  I’ve never been and I’m getting more excited by the hour.  Thanks to some blog friends and e-mails that have gone back and forth I feel pretty prepared to do some serious snagging and even some autograph collecting at the weekend games.

On Saturday we’ll be here:
At beautiful Camelback Ranch to watch my friend’s favorite team, the Dodgers, take on the Seattle Mariners… I’ll be rooting for Seattle.

And on Sunday we’ll be at lovely Scottsdale Stadium:
And we’ll be watching the Giants play the Padres… I’ll be rooting for the Pad Squad.

Both stadiums look awesome and I will blog about each game I attend… being that these are my first Spring Training games I really don’t know exactly what to expect but as I mentioned before, the blog community sure does make getting information easy.

Additionally, I have tickets to the exhibition game between the Angels and Padres on April 1st so I ‘ll get to have a little practice snag session in Anaheim before my first regular season game there (probably in mid-April) and I’m now locked in on my date with Citi Field: April 8th.  Hopefully I’ll run across a few of the NY ballhawks while I’m there.

You’ll hear from me again within the week!  Wish me luck–and feel free to comment with any advice or tips if you’ve got ’em.