Rollercoaster of Emotions

Where do I begin...
This weekend has been an extremely pleasant and fun filled weekend. I think I'll sum it up real quick similar to ESPN's Sports Center and then come back for the details. Let's see... there was a fun filled bike ride, haunted house, and Astros.

It all started this past Saturday morning. I challenged myself by riding in a 43 mile bike ride that I thought I could easily accomplish. Normally, this amount of distance is not a problem for me, but I was unaware of how many hills were on this route. I was dying by the end of the ride. It was pretty pathetic actually, but the important part is I finished the ride and in a somewhat decent time. The last few hills, I was literally going 5mph up the hill and there were kids running up the hill next to me. That was such a humbling moment. Of course, those stupid kids didn't just complete 40 miles worth of bike ride before running up the hill. If I had enough energy, I would have chased them down and smacked them just for the principality.

Wow, where did that anger come from? Ok, back to sanity now... Later that evening my daughter wanted to go to her very first haunted house. How could I tell her no? So off we went to the Carnage haunted house. This one was definitely cool. It was "E", my daughter, and my youngest sister. Neither my daughter nor my sister have ever been to any of the professional haunted houses. I knew this was going to be good...

I tried to build up the hype and get them all worked up before we got there. I told my daughter that they grab you and run sometimes, but that started to really freak her out. She said she would start to punch them in the face if they tried to grab her, so I had to tell her the truth that they would not touch her and she could not "punch 'em in the face". That seemed to calm her down a little bit. It was pretty funny, because somehow I ended up in the front of this four person scared train in the haunted house. There were certain parts that were pitch black and the hallways were constantly turning. I kept feeling my face flatten against the wall because the certain unnamed individuals behind me kept pushing me forward. So of course, who was first when the people would jump out? But revenge can be bitter sweet because they would wait until I passed them and jump out later when my daughter or sister was below them. They were really good. They popped out of stairwells and pictures. Some of the special effects were definitely Hollywood quality and I thought that was the best part. I highly recommend taking your children to a haunted house and watching the living poop get scared out of them. The best part was watching my daughter get freaked out by the guy chasing her with the chainsaw. It made me so proud to see her have this "screw everyone" attitude and just care for herself when she took off running to leave us behind with the chainsaw guy. Yeah, I might have been cut into a million pieces, but she would definitely never know because she was hauling ass out of there to safety. Ahhh, I install such fight or flight patterns in my child. What a proud dad I am...

And how can I not mention the Astros. Oh my gosh... They kicked butt on Saturday and needed just one more win to advance on in the playoffs. So what does that mean? Of course, they have to get all dramatic and win in a record setting 18th inning on Sunday. And what about Roger Clemens? This man is a machine. He comes in on the 15th inning to pinch hit and has to relief pitch in the 16th inning. He had three consecutive shutout innings to help us seal the deal for the win. The homerun by Burke just capped off the best baseball game ever played. We were down 6-1 until the 8th inning. I thought for sure we would have to play a game 5, but nope the Astros are not down and out until the game is over. Ausmus hit the homer with two outs in the ninth to put the game into extra innings. The game lasted like 5 hours and 50 minutes. We played 23 players in the game and used all our pitches except two of our starters. This is definitely one for the history books. I love this game.

So, that was the majority of things going on this weekend. There were a lot of other events that occurred, but they can not compete to these events. I am extremely sore and tired today, but I would not change one thing about this weekend. And for the record, I can safely say that I am in no way unlucky to the Astros. I was either watching the game or listening to the game this weekend and they won both games. I can't wait until Wednesday to play the Cardinals. I almost forgot the best part of the game yesterday. I was watching the game when they showed a banner someone brought to yesterday's game. It read,

"He CARLO$, how do you like the view from the couch?"

I thought that was the best part of the game (other than the 18th inning win, of course).