Life in the fast lane

The last two days have involved two of Cheryl and my favorite things... music and baseball. It all started Thursday night with a concert with the Newsboys, who had Anthem Lights, Abandon, and the City Harmonic warming up for them.

We had a fabulous time and even though we knew we would pay for it today (after only getting a few hours of sleep), it was worth the time. Okay, maybe going to a concert and then coming home to finish packing for an early (4:30 a.m.) trip to Tempe for a little baseball isn't the smartest thing in the world - but that's just how we roll.

We rolled into Tempe sometime after 10:30 a.m. (Tempe time) and headed out to the practice fields where the pitchers were doing their drills in preparation for what we hope will be a championship season. That's right... I said "championship" season... after all, it's spring.

We caught up with Bob, who is one of the wonderful and extremely nice folks who work at the stadium, snapped some photos, chatted a bit with fans, players and coaches and then headed off for a late lunch.

One of the things we love about coming to Tempe/Phoenix is that we get to head out to some of our favorite eating establishments. We're always on the look-out for something new and local and today we were very pleased with a recommendation that came from Keith Law of ESPN. Law recently tweeted that "if you're covering the Angels and you're not spending at least half of your meals at Hillside Spot Cafe - you should just go back to Los Angeles."

Cheryl and I had a pulled pork sandwich that was absolutely mouth watering. We followed it up with cookie (blondies) that was equally delectable. We're adding this restaurant to our "must visit" list for every trip to the area going forward.

We then headed to our hotel to crash for a few hours.

Spring training is all about watching baseball, eating and sleeping. Hey, it's all about doing things that help us have the best possible experience. We need our rest and food to fuel our days. Just saying.

Which brings me to dinner... Mike Butcher's sister-in-law has a restaurant (I don't know the extent of her actual involvement) called Aunt Chilada's and we had been dying to try it. We learned about it last year from our friend Joe. We had actually forgotten the name of the restaurant, but when we saw Mike Butcher he was kind enough to tell us the name.

The food here was very good and the chips (specifically the flour chips) were the best "chips" I've ever had. Cheryl had a quesadilla sampler and I had the chicken and spinach enchilada.



How was the food? Let's just say that we were 2 for 2 today and batting a thousand. This is how you do spring training right, folks.

The day in photographs... Included below are Jered Weaver, C.J. Wilson X 2, Latroy Hawkins/Jered Weaver/Mike Scioscia/Dan Haren, Jorge Cantu, Jerome Williams, and Chris Ianetta.