Exercise ADD: Stand up for yourself!

Since I've begun exercising, I've found that I'm a lot more comfortable with myself. I don't mean with my body image, but more my self-esteem and perception of myself. I've stepped outside my comfort zone in life, and guess what? I survived!
I could go on and on about all the different things I've done that have forced me outside of my little bubble, but I really just don't feel like it. Plus, this post is about this past weekend, not about the last 6 months of my life, or everything I was afraid of before that.

So Cameron and I went to Florida and saw some of our dear friends and then drove to Red Sox spring training in Ft. Myers. So on Saturday night, we get to fake Fenway and go watch BP from our favorite left field spot (where I once met the great Mariano Rivera). I then realize I'm an idiot, and the map of the ballpark where it looks like you can sit on right field makes no sense and you can't sit on right field. If you look at this map... we're supposed to be standing in the little purple triangle on right field. Except its actually standing room below the upper deck. OK, fine, I'm an idiot, I make my peace with mis-reading the map.

So Cameron and I go over to that area and we're told that our tickets are not for that area... they are for the lawn. OK. Now look where the lawn is. That kind of sucks, but we'll make the best of it... We get to the lawn, and the guy sends us to the back of the lawn, and then we are BEHIND the base of one of the lights. We actually cannot see anything. At this point, I went nuts. I was so pissed off - I bought these tickets on stub hub and they were listed for "Right Field Picnic Area" and I paid over face value for them because it seemed cool to sit on the field!
Now in the past, I either would have done nothing and sulked the whole time, OR I would have called stubhub and raised hell and screamed at them. I'm not exactly the best at letting things go.
I decided to call stubhub and talk to them calmly. I very calmly explained to the representative what happened and how the seats were misrepresented and I felt that we deserved some kind of compensation. She came back with 25% off the next tickets. I explained that that was a very nice offer but I felt like it was not enough considering how much I paid to stand behind the base of a giant baseball stadium light. So then she offered me 100% off the next tickets. We got a complete refund for the tickets we were currently using, which we used to buy tickets for Monday's game. I felt very vindicated. I was calm and forceful, and explained the issue very clearly. I felt like I was able to get what I wanted out of the conversation without having to be combative. Overall, I was very proud of myself for tackling the issue head on so quickly and calmly.
After everything was resolved, we decided to get some yummy Fenway franks and walk around the stadium for a while before standing next to the lawn on the other side.
THEN some guy comes up to us, looks around, then stops and offers us seats on the Green Monster!! Now for those of you who don't know anything about Fenway, the Green Monster is a giant wall in left field that is very unique to Fenway. At the real Fenway you can sit on top of it. At the fake Fenway, you can sit on top and also there are seats IN the Green Monster. Sure, we'll take free tickets.

View from the green monster

Me and Cameron on top of the green monster

So all in all, the night turned out to be a huge success! I'm not one for karma, but I do feel that having a good attitude helped us get the bonus Green Monster tickets. If I had been my usual sourpuss, I don't know if that guy would have offered us tickets. In the end, it made me realize that yes, I feel physical differences as a result of exercising, but I also feel some mental and emotional differences. I feel more resilient. If I can push myself for an extra 2 minutes on the treadmill past my breaking point, or run home 5 miles, I can do a lot of other things too outside of the exercise world.

Now to leave you with a few pictures of some real athletes we saw over the weekend.