Rain - a blessing and a curse

I had a feeling it was futile before I even got in the car. Raining hard here, rained hard pretty much the entire drive. Ever the optimist *** I felt like Charlie Brown standing on the mound screaming as the rain soaked him.

But the rainout turned out to be an OK thing. MASN was kind enough to invite a bunch of us blogging types to invade their suite (there goes the neighborhood). Instead, several of us got together at a place in Crystal City. Kristen and Stephanie were there from We've Got Heart. Chris, late of Capitol Punishment and now with NBCWashington.com, was there along with Brian from Nationals Farm Authority and Ian from Nationals Pride. Also there - our host Todd Webster from MASN, Rob Dibble and his wife (whose name escapes me and I hate that - I'm terrible with names).

We watched the Caps lose. Every team I watch these days loses. I won't watch them anymore. I promise. We ate, drank some (but stopped early because we had to drive) and talked a lot.

Dibble was very entertaining, very engaging. To say it was an enjoyable evening would be an understatement. Yeah, I know. I haven't been the most open-minded about Mr. Dibble but I'm also not an unreasonable person and I promise to be much more open-minded now. I hope once he gets to know the team/town/audience better that we will see and hear in the booth the same guy we saw/heard last night. Those who were there will vouch for this point - it will be fun and entertaining.

I'm not going to back away from my feeling about cheering in the booth. That's probably just a holdover from my "no cheering" media days. I still don't like it. That's OK. There's plenty about me not to like either.

But I will look past it and listen. I heard enough last night to move my knowledge level up a few points.

As for the cursed part - Zimmermann now debuts on Monday. Saturday and Wednesday are part of my ticket plan. I bought Sunday to see the originally scheduled debut. Not sure I can make another trip on Monday, as much as I'd like to, since I do have some actual work to get done. I may be unemplo ** self employed but I do have SOME stuff to get done.

Heck, I can just stay home and listen to Bob and Rob. I learned a bit about Zimmermann last night and I'm sure I'll learn more Monday.

Thanks Todd/MASN for hosting the evening, thanks Kristen for helping pull it all together - thanks to all of you for putting up with me. We bloggers do get out of our basements every now and then and we have fun when we do.