September 10, 2005 

Best night in ages. Timbers won their last regular season game and made the playoffs and, at the post game party drink-o-thon, I got to meet my favorite player: Hugo Alcaraz Cuellar! Hell, I got to meet his whole family!

That's one of the great things about the Timbers, they actually hang out with their fans. There's always a post game party at a nearby pub, and the players go to the pub and hang out with everyone. So Ross and I were at the pub, sitting in front of the Timbers mural the pub has on a wall, and a guy that looks like Hugo Alcaraz-Cuellar asks if we could move for a moment, while he takes a photo of his mom in front of the mural.

So I was standing there, a bit drunk, wondering why a 20-something year old guy brought his mom to a pub and why he wants a photo of her in front of a soccer mural, and that's when the guy pointed to Hugo's image in the mural and said, "that's my brother." Ah, that explained it, Hugo's brother wanted a photo of Hugo's mom in front of the mural with Hugo in it

Right as he went to take the photo, however, the battery in his camera died. But, how convenient, I had my camera with me! So I handed Hugo's brother my camera and told him he could use it and I'd email the photo to him. And imagine my surprise when, after he took the photo, he wrote down an email address and handed it to me saying, "this is Hugo's email address, you can send the photo to him."

I was just about to launch into the happy dance over the fact that I had Hugo's email address and a reason to use it, when Hugo walked up. And, just as I was about to dive under a table in a fit of shyness, Hugo's brother says, "hey, do you want a photo with Hugo?"

Uhm... Gee... I... But whether it was the beer or a brief moment of carpe diem, I managed to toss my table diving shyness aside and say, "Uh... sure." In bold timidity, I went over to Hugo, managed not to pass out when he put his arm around me, then cringed when Hugo's brother waited for Ross to join us. It didn't take long for Ross to walk over but, standing there arm and arm with Hugo, I felt akward, like I should say something, but didn't trust myself to not blurt out something about ball handling skills.

After the photo, I thanked Hugo, at which point he said, "no, thank you, you guys deserve a lot of the credit." I stood there confused, thinking 'geez, it was just a photo' but then realized he was talking about the fans, thanking the fans, giving them credit. Ok, that made sense. But I'm shy and was drunk, so even though it made sense, I couldn't think of a response, so I instead demonstrated what it sounds like when I gargle. Granted, that's not what I meant to do, but even my tongue was being shy and attempting to crawl down my throat and hide, resulting in my profound utterance of gurrrgllurguh, after which I skittered off to hide under a table.

So it was quite the night, a perfect night, and I was totally caught off guard by it. I went to the game just hoping the Timbers would win, but now I'm sitting here with spiffy photos to boot. Kinda trippy. But it's nice when life does that, launches a surprise attack of wonderfulness, and reminds you of how good it can be.

Now if only I didn't look bug-eyed in the photo. I swear, one of these days I'm going to get a photo with someone famous and not look bad in it. I have a photo of me and Martin Gore, a photo of me and Nick Cave, and now a photo of Hugo and I, and I look bad in all of them. Actually, I have the same look in all of them. The happiness induced eyes popping out of my head look. But I suppose there are worse looks than happiness.

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