As some of you know, Adam and I attended the Home Run Derby and All-Star Game in St. Louis this week. We had a blast, but rather than go into every stinkin' detail, I made a top 10 list.

Top 10 Things That Made My Trip

10. Getting kicked in the back of the head/neck the ENTIRE time I was in my (very expensive) seat at Busch Stadium by a 1-2 yr old sitting on his mother's lap. Granted, I understand children are free, only so long as they sit on a parent's lap, and it's not like there were a whole lot of spare seats available during the All-Star week. I get it. I really do. At the same time...don't act like you don't know what your kid is doing when they are SITTING ON YOUR LAP. It's kind of hard to miss.

9. The 7 yr old to the right of kicky mcgee, who gave an excellent play-by-play and even better commentary. He was very upset with the umpire's determination of the strike zone in comparison with what is considered the strike zone in his video game ("it's way bigger, dude.")

8. The man we bought tickets from off of eBay (Sam) turning out NOT to be a scam artist, and actually a very nice guy, despite a few spam emails received directing us to Western Union the ticket money to Jeffrey Takeda in the UK. (P.S. It's a pretty good indicator that you're looking at a fake email when it's signed: "Regards, verylegitimate" At least make very legitimate 2 words, gosh!)

7. Ellen, our waitress at Zia's in The Hill for being the best waitress ever and explaining to us how only 2 men own all the parking in downtown StL, so expect to get f'd if you don't park at your hotel...or maybe even then too. (Side note, this is why StL beats Chicago ANY day of the week. Our parking at a DOWNTOWN HOTEL during the biggest baseball week of the year, with several main events located immediately across the street from the hotel....had a $20 fee to park for the entire time we were there. We spent one night in downtown Chitown this April which, by the way, is nowhere near Wrigley Field, and spent $50 to park for ONE night. Suck it Chicago.)

6. Learning that my dog has somehow (after a little over a year) decided to be a humper. My parents' hellion, ahem, dog, Gracie may be an instigator but I'm pretty sure that was a surprise. I swear, Bella has never humped anything, anyone, any dog, nothing. No idea where she got the idea to start humping. I blame Gracie. She's like the bad little kid at school that your parents won't let you play with because they don't want the bad kid to rub off on you. Bella learns all kinds of new tricks after she stays with Gracie...although I suspect Bella's grandma and grandpa maaaaaaaay have something to do with the sudden need to jump into chairs, lay on the bed, and etc. Let's just all hope that's not where she learned ALL her new tricks...gross.

5. Getting locked out of our hotel room at 1 AM after the All-Star Game. I really love it when employees try and tell you how much "trouble" they'll get in for doing their jobs. "Oh, I could really get in a lot of trouble for resetting your room key." Are you serious? "Well, if you don't know the SSN of the person who booked the room, that is." Keep in mind, the person who booked our rooms is a friend of a friend whom we just met, and although the room is technically in her name since we have not checked out/paid yet, they do have Adam's credit card on file already for incidentals and express checkout. So, no, I'm sorry, I do not know her SSN, nor do I want to wake her up and ask for it in order for you, lovely hotel front desk worker, to DO YOUR JOB. Also, I really do not want to stand up here and argue with you about why you should do your job and fix what is clearly a hotel problem (non-working key) at ONE AM after I've been out in the bleeding hot sun all damn day giving my every last tourist dollar to float the city's economy. GIVE ME THE FRICKIN KEY, BITCH! I won.

4. Getting up to our room after the key incident, only to have Adam (who has a severely plugged nose from allergies) walk in and say "wonder where they hid the joint?" Our room REEKED of pot. Not like, maybe some dirty hippies walked by. Like 5 of us searched the room for a kilo of kush. We didn't find anything. Maybe it was just me being an anxious and paranoid person (or maybe it was the pot! haha) but I was kinda freaking out about being charged for smoking in a non-smoking room. After all the hoopla in IL regarding indoor smoking and the crazy high fees if they do smell smoke in your room, I was not about to get charged (or have the friend who purchased the rooms get charged, since the front desk can't do their jobs) for something I didn't do, especially something illegal. So, I called the front desk, who assured me they would send up security. It is now almost 2 AM and we are exhausted. I waited 45 minutes and went to bed. No one showed up.

The more I thought about it, when we originally left our room earlier that day, they were cleaning someone else's room, and I noticed there were 3 cleaning ladies in there, which I thought was kind of weird. It's the Holiday Inn, for crying out loud! How many people does it take to clean that size of room? One of the cleaning ladies was actually sitting at the room's desk, working on something. I couldn't see if she was actually on someone's laptop or what the deal was, but I remember thinking, thank God we put up our do not disturb sign so they won't clean our room. Clearly that worked out.

3. Seeing Ted Lilly not only get booed when they introduced the All-Stars, but sit his ass on the bench for the entire game. That's what happens when you've been losers for 101 years.

2. Yadier Molina's game-changing hit. Yadi is my homeboy.

1. My good friend, the 7 yr old commentator: "I don't know about this Ichiro; he looks kinda like a sissy."