Participation wasn’t what I had hoped

Last night was the unofficial Springfield Bloggers Night at the Sliders game, as you all know from my having written about nothing besides that for two and a half weeks. Shoo did a terrific job of plugging the event, and seemed to be getting a few more people than had originally said here that they would come.

So… what happened?!

Last thing I remember reading was that we were all going to meet inside the gate on the visitors’ side, roughly 15-20 minutes prior to game time. Now, since Nick from Unpainted Huffhines is the only one of any of you that I’ve actually met, I was looking for him. Well, I didn’t see him, and didn’t see him, and it’s getting closer and closer to game time, so I decided we’ll just go grab some seats on the first base side- where I thought we were all going to sit- and see if I could find him there.

No sign of Nick.

Finally, as I’m making a napkin run to work on cleaning up L’il Johann’s Popsicle spill, I see Nick. So I figure I’ll go get the napkins and then come back and find him and we’ll join the throngs of people that showed up, right? Wrong. I come back up the stairs and Nick is nowhere to be found now. So I go back to our seats up the first base line, and long story short, right after the Anthem was over, Nick comes walking up. Success, right? Now we can join all the others, right?

Nope.

Nick was just as baffled as I was. He said he had briefly spotted Dan and Shoo, but really couldn’t find anyone else. So Nick sat with Mrs. Johann, L.J., and me and we watched some good baseball. Shortly into the game, Nick spots Dan and calls him over and introduces us. Shortly after that, here comes Shoo- who is now bigger in Springfield than Gus Gordon- and I finally meet him. So we all pretty much sat there and took in the game and chatted and had a pretty good time. Eventually, Dan’s wife and kids came by to sit with us, and frequent commenter extraordinaire Nancy came by and introduced herself. Mrs. Shoo eventually wandered over as well.

In hindsight, maybe if we are to attempt this again, perhaps we should just meet outside by having someone stand there with a ‘SPFLD Bloggers’ sign and we can congregate there and then all go in together. To any bloggers/commenters that were there but sat alone because you weren’t able to find anyone, I apologize. Poor planning, poor execution, I don’t know- something kinda caved in in the process. But if people {that said they’d come} just didn’t show up, then I have to ask:

WASSUP WIDDAT?!

Now I realize things come up- trust me, until about 3:30, I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to make it myself. I just figured there’d be more than what there was. I don’t know, maybe it just seemed like a greater response than what it was. Oh well. Anyhooze, it was a great game (Sliders win 5-4 in 11 innings after a botched throw on what should have been the third out) and the family and I had a good time. Not sure if anyone else did… I wouldn’t be against doing another night, but we’d definitely have some things to work out.

So let me just say- Nick, as always, it was great to see you; and to Nancy, the Shoo’s, and the Dan at BFS’s, it was great to finally meet all of you. Oh, and Dan, I am still not really getting that whole Steve Buscemi thing. I thought that Tammy, on the other hand, could be Mariska Hargitay’s twin sister. Just my opinion. I’m just sayin’.

Anyway, I had a good time, had some good conversation with good people, and got to see some good baseball. Hopefully we can possibly do it again, or have some other similar (or maybe not so similar) social gathering of some sort. Since we’re all in the Springfield Bloggers “community”, why not get to know each other?

(RANDOM TANGENT ALERT) What was the deal with the kid in the front row, straight down from where we were, and his hair?! He had some sort of Mohawk-meets-mullet thing going on– sort of a mull-hawk, I guess– yet had some pretty narly Flock of Seagulls-esque bangs action happening as well. Like Nick said, it was like 3 really, really bad 25-year-old hairstyles were all trying to fight it out for scalp supremacy. I don’t know if this kid lost a bet, or if his parents are punishing him for something, or what, but it was pretty scary.