Cinco de Mayo with JB and "TB", Thirsty Thursday Baseball, Kasey's Piano Bar B-Day and Bedlam Baseball

For a guy that has been somewhat of a recluse over the last few months around OKC, I did alright this past week.

Tuesday was May 5th and of course CINCO DE MAYO!! Didn't have any concrete plans for the evening but ended up hooking up with friends Todd and JB for a trip to a mexican restaurant. Arrived there and grabbed a table next to the bar and after 5 minutes JB decided that the service was slower than it should be and suggested that we go to another mexican restaurant. Somehow the plan changed as we walked out the door and he ended up talking us into going to his favorite hangout which was next door to the place we were exiting. It is a smokey little blues bar and there is nothing Mexican about it (keep in mind it was Cinco de Mayo) but we ended up over there. It was a nice night out so we ended up sitting outside and enjoying a few drinks with a couple of JB's friends that we ran into. The highlight of the night was Todd was wearing a Tampa Bays Rays baseball team hat that has the initials TB on it (see picture) and one of the girls asked him if it stood for tuberculosis. Somehow that turned into her calling him "Todd Berculosis" which ended up being his nickname for the rest of the evening. Todd owns hats for 23 different major league baseball teams and that hat had been one of his favorites but he mentioned that he may not be able to wear it as much any more.

Thursday night I went out with about 15 Thunder co-workers to watch the Oklahoma City Red Hawks baseball team play the Albuquerque Isotopes at Bricktown Ballpark. The Red Hawks are the Texas Rangers AAA minor league baseball team (one step below the major leagues) and the Isotopoes are the Los Angeles Dodgers team. Thirsty Thursday Nights is the local promotion and all beers are $1 up until the 5th inning which was the big draw for many of them. I'm not much of a beer drinker so it isn't quite as exciting to me but I did manage to have a beer. I did have my camera with me but only managed to take a few pics, none of which were worthy of ending up on this blog. Wasn't a good night for the hometown team as they were shut out.

Yesterday was my friend Kasey's birthday so a handful of us went out and celebrated with her by going out for dinner at Abuelo's followed by a great time at the new Bricktown piano bar, Michael Murphy's. Abuelo's had shut down for a while for some renovations and it showed. About 10 of us ordered food and at first only 3 dinners were served, one of them was the wrong order and one had cold food. They took both back so one of our friends had to eat while the other 9 of us waited for a long time for our meal. At the end of the meal the restaurant manager came out and apologized to us for the delay and explained they probably should have stayed closed for a few more days as they weren't completely organized yet and comp'd all of our dinners, minus the alcohol. I was drinking water with my dinner so I ate for free, not bad seeing my entree cost $14.95. We all had a great dinner though and our waitress was from Seattle. Turns out OU has a really good veterinary program so she moved out here to study.

We then headed over to the piano bar where we all had a blast. Kasey had called earlier in the week to reserve tables at the very front of the stage and we were treated to hours of great entertainment. They had dualing pianos and a set of drums along with an occasional guitar. There were 3 main entertainers and they rotated back and worth on the instruments (all 3 played piano, one played drums and one played guitar). Oklahoma and Oklahoma State were playing baseball that night right down the street so they had a contest to see which school would tip the most money to have their fight song played. A person would go up and give $10 for OU and one guy would play the fight song, someone else would then beat the tip for OSU and the other piano player would break into OSU's song. This went back and forth for about 5 minutes and I'm guessing these guys made about $200 during that time. I included plenty of pictures. Kasey is one wearing the black top and her boyfriend Jason (my friend and co-worker) is the one that she has her hands all over :-) The only bad part of the night was that they had Kasey sit up on top of the piano so that they could sing Happy Birthday to her. Kasey had fun with that but managed to fall off the stage when returning to the table. I didn't get any pictures of that but she was okay other than a sore thumb. There is also a random picture in here of me with our waitress. She was a cutey and a lot of fun so I had to include her.

Today my friend Nick (another Sonics/Thunder co-worker) and I headed down to the Bricktown Ballpark to watch Oklahoma and Oklahoma State play another "Bedlam" baseball game. The two teams had played each other on Friday night in Tulsa and last night in OKC and OU had won both games. Today OSU got a little revenge by winning 5-1. Nick was able to get us 2nd row seats on the first base line so I was sure to get plenty of pictures. We also ran into OSU mascot Pistol Pete out on the concourse and had our pictures taken. One of my favorite moments of the game was when it was lightly drizzling out, the woman sitting behind me told her daugther that it was a "Seattle weather kind of day". I turned around and told her we were from Seattle. Apparently her daugther was on the phone talking to the woman's brother who lives in Seattle.