New Year's Resolutions...& This Year, We Mean It

Let's call a spade a spade. Last year, we made a lot of promises to you and to be honest, we forgot about 80% of them. It's by pure coincidence alone that we managed to accomplish any of them at all. This year we plan on printing this blog post off and carrying it around with us like grocery list so that we can cross off tasks as we complete them.

In order for you to truly understand how we've failed you, let's relive the resolutions from last year that we didn't complete:
1. Cover a World Series game in person even if the Mets or Yankees aren't in the playoffs. Somehow, we'll figure it out.
2. Covering the remaining playoff games from the bar. Literally. As in we'll bring the internet machine to a bar, hack the bar's WiFi (side note: the password is quite often the bar's phone number), and cover the games. In addition to the blog post, we'll also post commentary to Twatter. (@TravelingBBabes). Follow us. Do it.
3. Get TOWSNBN to take a picture with Lisa.
4. Visit and blog about our visit to the Baseball Hall of Fame.
5. Attend Star Wars Night.
6. Score 200 followers on Facebook. We're currently at 185. - What is happening here that you can't get your friends to like us???
7. Spy a professional player in plain clothes. We stress professional. You and your beer bully running around a baseball field in dirty sweatpants that you haven't washed in months doesn't count as a baseball player.
8. It may not be fiscally possible for us to attend more Yankees and Mets games, but we will do everything in our power to cover baseball more actively, whether that means talking to bar patrons/baseball fans during games or stalking tailgate parties. - Considering this is a baseball blog, it's pretty shameful that this needs to be on the list in the first place.
9. Establish a weblog. - Honestly, we're not even sure why we came up with this because we don't even know what a weblog is, but this year, we'll strive to find out what a weblog is and how to make one.
10. Serena will finally get a job with the Yankees even if that means she's responsible for cleaning all of Derek Jeter's 4 million pairs of shoes that reside in his locker.
11. Get on the jumbotron together at any stadium.
12. Be recognized at a game for being the world renown Traveling Baseball Babes.
13. TBB World Domination.

Here are the few successful resolutions:
1. "Post more video." If you follow us on Facebook, Twatter, and/or Instagram, you may have noticed that we've been better about this. We've even posted more video clips to the blog itself. In 2014, we vow to continue this trend since you seem to like it so much.
2. "Win a Halloween Costume Contest." Boom. Done.
3. "Dive deeper into the mystery surrounding the Subway Series. Why do Yankees and Mets fans hate each other so much?" We may not have found anything conclusive, but we did conduct the investigation.
4. "We are going to make every effort to be more attractive for you. Again, we stress try. We can't promise you anything since we don't have the money to afford plastic surgery, but we will make every effort to clean up nice. As nice as we possibly can." Hopefully, if you followed us on Instagram or Twatter, you saw our classy photos from New Year's Eve. And if you don't follow us, well....you suck and you're missing out. So go take a ride on our suck sticks.
5. "Strive to cover the All Star Game at Citi Field. If not the game or Home Run Derby, we'll strive to cover the Fan Fest activities." Done and done. Apples are terrible. And so is running.
6. "Bring Auntiedukes to her first Mets game, which we'd been promising since 2011." Check.
7. "Go to Billy's by Yankee Stadium for GuidoFest so that Lisa can finally meet the Guido of her dreams." Yes, we went to Billy's, but for some reason, the Guidos were not really out and the ones that were had girlfriends already.

So, this year, we vow to really focus on all of those tasks we forgot about last year, plus these new ones:
1. Get rid of Kitty aka: the one called "Max."
2. Lisa finally watches all of the Star Wars movies. Even the bad ones staring Natalie Portman (the acting equivalent to a cardboard box).
3. Get one professional baseball player to follow us (whether it be on the blog, Facebook, Twatter, Instagram, or Google+).
4. Attend Opening Day together.
5. Post a Q&A. Something about us that you're curious to know? We'll give you a period of time where you can email/message/post/etc. anything you want to know about Lisa, Serena, or both of us and we will dedicate an entire blog post to your questions. Please no requests for photos of us naked or in our knickers. Don't be creepy.
6. Win the "Shiva Bowl" in our fantasy leagues. Bonus points for the other TBB making it into the playoffs as well.
7. Serena will get a good night's sleep. And by a good night's sleep, we mean the recommended 7-8 hours as opposed to her usual 2-4 hours.
8. Serena will have a penetration partner and Lisa will have a baby daddy. Not the same man (which shouldn't be too difficult seeing as how we're attracted to totally different men).

At the start of 2015, we will revisit this list. Hopefully, we will at least have accomplished #8 on the "new resolutions" list. That's the only one we really care about anyway.

All-Star Game Shenanigans

A lot of things went wrong for us during this recent All-Star Break. We started with the best intentions. As always, everything we do, we do it for you (cue Bryan Adams). And as always, we suffer. It all started with a 5K. Why we continue to take part in these things when we both hate running is truly beyond the scope of our understanding. We truly must be a-holes. That is the only possible answer to this question. Running is terrible. And boring. Add the great outdoors and it's basically a goddamn nightmare. For starters, this run started at 8 am. Who the f*ck wants to get up at the ass crack of dawn on a Saturday to go for a run in the humidity? The only thing keeping us motivated this early in the morning was coffee and the promise of MLB mascots. When we arrived in Brooklyn, there was no parking. We drove around Brooklyn for 45 minutes before parking illegally in front of a fire hydrant and praying that Lisa didn't get a ticket. Needless to say, by the time we got our race bib and garbage and headed to the start line, we were suffering from some serious RBF.

There were so many runners that it felt like we were already 1 mile from the start line. Lisa turned to Serena and said, "Are they kidding? I have to run a mile before the race even begins?" Serena laughed. "Oh, no. I never run this part. At best I speed walk." Which is exactly what we did. We didn't really have much of a choice anyway considering how slow the mob moved until we got to the start line. At the start line, our moods immediately lifted because we got to high-five the Astros' alien or muppet or whatever the hell he is, Wally the Green Monster, Screech, Ace, Dinger, Sluggerr, Mr. Met, Stomper and TC Bear. We wish that someone had videoed our reactions because while Serena has no idea what she looked like, she specifically recalls Lisa's face changing from misery to pure joy at the sight of Houston Astro-Puff. Or whatever his name is. Here is a another picture of mascots. Our positive, upbeat moods lingered for all of 5 minutes. Basically enough time for Serena to listen to Peter Gabriel's "Sledgehammer" on her iPod. Then the humidity and crowd took its toll.

Let's fast forward to the finish line. There were no mascots. There were no bagels. It was a farce. All we got was stinky Gatorade (NO WATER), Kebler granola bars, and bananas. Serena can single-handedly eat $15 worth of Taco Bell without dying. That's just ONE of us. Without exercise. Together...we can eat a 400 lbs. man under the table and they didn't even have the decency to give us bagels after we ran 3.1 sweat-soaked miles? Are they a-holes? Furthermore, where the f*ck did the mascots go? They should've been at the finish line, dumping coolers of Gatorade on us like we pitched a shutout inning at the All-Star Game. Why was the Kebler Elf the only mascot thingy in costume for this entire event?  You can't tell us that the heat was the reason the mascots had to go into hiding because if that's the case, we're calling Mascot Protective Services on the MLB on behalf of the Kebler Elf.

This is us post-race, pretending to be happy. Serena has Gatorade on her nipple.

Our next All-Star activity was the hunt for all of the All-Star Game apples that the MLB hid all over New York City like a bunch of a-holes. We figured that we'd have this over and done with in a day and home in time to post a blog. Oh, how wrong we were. We'll get to that. Let's start with the beginning of our journey.

We started by heading to Citi Field, which we somehow managed to forget was in the midst of hosting FanFest and Taco Bell All-Star Sunday. It's probably because the MLB didn't feed us bagels the day before at the race, so our brains were still starved. Due to FanFest, we couldn't park in the lot. We had no passes and parking cost $35. Horse sh*t. We decided to park on random side street of Flushing. Does anyone know what Flushing looks like? Allow us to illuminate you. Here is a photo of one of the many beautiful views that Flushing has to offer visitors to the area. So...we parked here and then WALKED to Citi Field, where we hopped the fence before realizing one of the fences was left open for VIP parking. Still, we remained jovial about the whole endeavor. It was already 4:00 in the afternoon and we were only JUST arriving to our first apple (that was not located in New York City) and yet we were confident that we'd find all 35 apples in one day and STILL be able to blog. We swear that we do not do drugs. We can't stress that enough.

Look how happy we are. We're still fresh and upbeat. We're not sweat-ridden, miserable, and smelly.

Of course, after the apple, like children, we got easily distracted and spent another 30 minutes running around the exterior of the stadium partaking in activities we didn't pay for.

We finally headed into the city around 5:00. Yes, that's right. FIVE. How in the hell did we think we'd track down another 34 apples in one day by starting at 5:00? Our first apple in the city was located at a Bed, Beth, and Beyond on E 60th Street...because Bed, Bath totally has everything to do with baseball and/or the Angels.

We quickly nailed down another 5 apples, including the Mets' apple outside of the SNY Studios.

We remained pretty confident until the Intrepid. The Intrepid was our downfall. On the map, it seemed so much closer than it really was and at the time, we were all about being awesome walkers...or something. The path to the Intrepid was a long one...without shade during a monster heat wave (PS - in case you didn't notice, we wore jeans...like complete asshats). Oh, and we forgot to mention that we kind of got drunk at McGee's before heading out on this mission to the Intrepid. The only thing good that came out of the Nationals' apple was the discovery that we can survive on a deserted island on chips/spinach dip and beer. We apparently don't even need water. Just beer will do. Upon arriving at the Intrepid, we discovered that the All-Star Gala (GALA. Not party. Not kegger. Not picnic. A f*cking gala. As in evening wear.) was being held there. Here we are, dressed in sweaty, filthy street clothing and frazzled hair, walking up to a posh evening event like insane homeless people. We're surprised the dozens of cops at the event didn't stop us for looking suspicious. Here's our picture of the Nats' apple. The epitome of grandeur, no?

After we took that photo, sh*t got real. We realized that we had to walk all the way back and continue looking for apples. There was a lot of bitching about how we could've worn fancy dresses and our stupid ideas. In fact, there was mostly bitching about our stupid ideas.
"Why do we always come up with these stupid ideas?"
"Why doesn't anyone stop us?"
"Why are we such a-holes?"
"Why are these apples so goddamn far apart?"
"Why are we such a-holes?"
"I'm so tired."
"I'm so hungry."
"My feet hurt."
"Such a stupid idea!"
"Why? Why? WHY?"
"Who picked these apple locations? These people are a-holes."
"These people in their stupid fancy dresses are a-holes."
"F*ck you in your suit you f*ck. Yeah. I'm talking to you. Think you're so special because you're going to a gala? We're special!"

It would be quite some time before we reached our next apple. By that point, we were dragging ass. It started to become a reality that there was an excellent chance we would not be getting to all of the apples. Stores had begun to close. Most of the apples were in stores. We had to take a picture with the Mariners' apple through the window. The Royals' apple was gated off. Yet, we forged on. We finally reached the Yankees' apple at 9:00. The Modell's that the apple was located in closed at 9:30, so we barely made it in time.

The Giants' apple was at a Tommy Bahama store, which made zero sense. We should point out that we had never heard of this place, so we assumed we were looking for a margarita bar. Maybe we were just thirsty. Plus, the store had hidden it in the back behind a bunch clothing racks displaying ugly Hawaiian shirts and All-Star Game shirts, so the only view of it we could get was this:

We borderline crawled to the next three apples, slowly working our way back to Penn Station and accepting the fact there was no physical way we'd get to the remaining 13 apples. We felt like failures. Dirty failures. Who still had to shower when they got home because they needed to report to work the next day. It's apparently socially unacceptable to go to the office unwashed and stinking of sweaty New York. We got home at around 11:45 at night and then showered. Who the hell can fall asleep after a shower when you're feeling so fresh and clean? Fail.

Fast forward to Monday. We're not sure how we didn't die from dehydration on Sunday. In all seriousness. Yet that didn't stop us from muttering all day at our desks and to each other via email about the injustice of it all. Of life, MLB, apples, and happiness. Why were the gods so cruel to us? Why were we forced to work at all? Why can't our day jobs be apple hunting? We knew the apples would be gone as soon as the All-Star Game was over, plus we'd be leaving for St. Louis the day after. There was no way we could go back and finish what we started...or could we?

We decided to take Tuesday off from work to finish this stupid idea, despite the fact that neither of us had started packing for St. Louis, which we were leaving for early on Wednesday morning (the results of that was over-packing including several pairs of yoga outfits and an abundance of jeans and panties...as in 3 weeks worth of underwear for 5 days). We suppose that even a bad idea needs to be seen to the end. Was this stupid? Yes, but we're stupid and we still stand by the fact that we did this all for you. This is where a mature, responsible adult needed to step in and tell us that we are d*cks who need to cut the sh*t. We both have 401K plans and are over 30 years old. Why are we acting like this?

We decided to reward our "ingenuity" by having a few beers and wings. This was ANOTHER mistake. We should've gone home and slept. Our feet and bodies still hurt from our shenanigans the day before, running without bagels, and wearing heels to work that day like buffoons. By the time we arrived at the bar (still in heels...and now swollen ankles because we chose not to rest them in flats), we looked the picture of road worn. Imagine a flower wilted from too much sun and no water. That was us. At a bar. We got the cold shoulder, no party for our apple accomplishments, and in fact, one a-hole patron didn't even know what the hell we were talking about when we mentioned the apples. This was a mistake on his part. We...looked and acted...insane...muttering about apples. It suddenly became, "F*ck you! F*ck this bar! F*ck this town! F*ck these sh*tty wings! F*ck these beers! F*ck you and these apples! And your mother! F*CK!" (We should stress that we didn't shout any of this at anyone. It was whispered firmly to each other and into our beers as we slowly began to lose grip on reality and our sanity) We clearly needed to be prescribed Xanax by this point. We were on edge and unstable.  So we quietly gathered our belongings and made an exit as lady-like as possible and drove to the closest McDonald's for French fries.

Which brings to us to Tuesday. We sort felt like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day. We started bright and early this time but the temperature had sky rocketed to close to 100 degrees. However, we had learned our lesson from Sunday and we wore shorts (with socks, so we look incredibly unattractive...the only thing to make this image worse would've been plaid shorts with polo shirts tucked into them). Also, Auntiedukes was kick ass enough to plot our entire day via subway in order to cut down on time and alleviate the pain in our foot arches, lower backs, shins (Lisa), and knees (Serena). We also packed water bottles this time and swore off all pubs. Yes...this was serious business. Our first apple was in Harlem. Lisa had never been to Harlem before...

...and now we're pretty sure Lisa will never go again. Standing on the corner outside the subway station, a creeper approached Lisa and said, "give me your hand." Needless to say, this trip did not go well. After getting our photo, we basically sprinted to the safety of the subway station to head back to the Central Park area.

The Rockies' apple was Day 2's Intrepid experience. We had banged out 3 other apples relatively easily, but the Rockies were an entirely different story. The MLB reported the World Financial Center at one location, Newsday at another, and Google Maps at a third. Where was this f*cking apple? Thanks to a fellow blogger, we discovered that we weren't the only idiots who ran into this problem. He found the apple after a bunch of missteps in the plaza between building 3 and 4. Due to the construction at the World Trade Center site, this required another trek similar to the Intrepid. By the time we reached the apple, we were back in RBF mode. In fact, we yelled at the apple. Again, we stress, like crazy people. Crazy people that aren't medicated.

Thanks to Auntiedukes, the rest of the apples were found without further incident, but that didn't mean we weren't exhausted and unmotivated. Which brings us to Union Square. While searching for the Best Buy that housed the Twins' apple, we walked by a little store and Lisa said, "quick, give me a yoga pose." And then Serena put her f*cking hands on the New York City sidewalk without even thinking of the grossness of it.

In fact, it took us another few blocks before Serena even remembered to put anti-bacterial solution on her hands. Lisa didn't even remind her. Or scold her. That's how tired we were. We thought about it the next day while combing through the day's pictures.

Finally, at long last, while the All-Star Game played on without us, we found the final apple at a Modell's near Herald Square.

The satisfaction in completing this asstastic scavenger hunt was better than the last sex we've had (not with each other because we don't do that you f*cking immature perverts. The fact that we have to type this just shows how immature you are.).

We leave you with these final words. MLB, your next tour of All-Star crap needs to be plotted in a more logical, thought-out route. The fact that you even considered Harlem to be an acceptable location shows just how far you've fallen from your Throne of Clarity. And also, f*ck you. Thank you and have a nice day.