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The thing about this is...
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| I started thinking a day or two ago about what it would take for me to be able to seriously consider moving out of my parents' house.
To put it another way, I make $12/hour, work full time, and pay approximately $400 in Student Loan bills every month. This leaves me with the ability to do some cool things like buy somewhat extravagant Christmas gifts, go on occasional vacations (i.e. New York in November and the Bay Area in April of this year), and play and watch baseball without it totally destroying me financially, but doing all that makes it so that I can't move out.
As a Christmas Gift, my parents have committed to helping me pay off one of my seven student loans. If I continue to save money at the rate that I have recently, I could also pay off another of my loans in its entirety. I figure that if both of these occur, I could rent a place for about $425 a month and have about $500 monthly left over for food, electricity, gas for the car, and probably an Internet bill (not including any overtime I may be paid, tips I may be paid, or any income from my second job).
So I start discussing this openly around the house, and my mom basically says "not so fast." My parents have also been helping me with car insurance (I'm on their policy, and they have not asked me for any money) and health insurance (I can apparently be on my mom's until age 25). My mom notes that if I'm going to move out, I need to pay my own car insurance. Maybe I was just being tired and over-reactionary this morning, but it was upsetting that as soon as I bring up the idea of moving out, other road blocks get thrown in the way.
I mean yes, I should be paying for those insurances, and I want to be. But why haven't we had this discussion earlier? Why doesn't this come up at all when I discuss going to Oakland to watch baseball and see friends? The timing of the suggestion makes it seem like the suggestion itself was meant to tear me down a little bit.
Anyway, I expect to have a better idea of my finances by May, when I'll be collecting checks for Seattle Storm work and the bowling alley will enter its summer schedule where there are fewer hours to go around. Also, I should have the whole trip to the Bay Area paid off by May, so that'll help me too.
I'd really like to get this done, if only because I consider my dating prospects to be severely diminished by the fact that I live at home. I mean, I know many people for whom living at home is a reality, and jobs are generally pretty hard to come by, but it's hard to impress anyone when you live with your parents. | comments: Leave a comment   |
| On my day off, I did more work, messing with the sound system for Seattle University. It looks like I'm going to get some time to figure out what I want to play for the Storm in the upcoming season. I think I'm basically just going to rely on what has seemed to work for me in the past; when I worked Willamette basketball, I got positive comments about my music selections.
Wireless Internet is up and running at my house, which is exciting.
I'm going to have to start logging information about the bowling alley. Conventional wisdom is that people don't come in to spend their money later on in the month because they're trying to budget out their paycheck, but in the last two Saturdays we've been hit VERY hard.
Strangely, our "value price" days, like Wednesday ($8 cover charge, $0.25/game, $1/domestic beer) have been a little low. Maybe the people who come in on weekends (when we charge $26/hour) aren't worried about the price, but those who come in when it's cheaper are really concerned about it?
On the other hand, customers complaining about high prices are a somewhat frequent weekend occurrence, so maybe I'm off the mark here. I'm going to have to write some stuff down to figure out trends.
I can also believe that it's happening partially because I'm good at my job. I'm not sure how long it takes for that to take effect with people. I suppose I'd notice more if more people started becoming "regulars" which I think is really the goal, turning a casual customer into a regular and a regular bowler into a league bowler and then keeping your league bowlers. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| Yesterday, I picked up baseball tickets for the Mariners' Opening Day game down in Oakland.
I have to balance my travel a little with things like "money" and "my work schedule," but here's what I'm thinking right now.
I can leave Seattle for Oakland at 5:30pm on Saturday April 3, and catch an exhibition game in San Francisco on Sunday at about noon. AT&T Park in San Francisco seems like it's really pretty but I've never been there. Opening Day is Monday in Oakland, and I also want to see Cliff Lee pitch his first game as a Mariner on Tuesday. I can then fly back to Seattle on Wednesday and basically hit all my objectives.
It's $79 to fly to Oakland on Saturday (Southwest Airlines), then fly for $80 from Oakland back to Seattle by Delta, and then cut $50 out of it because of the New York travel I did last fall... but then I get to add taxes back to both of those, which probably makes the round trip about $150.
I'm going to have Internet beginning sometime tomorrow. Comcast is scheduled to be at my house between noon and two. Hopefully everything will go well with that and I'll be speaking to you from a reliable connection with reasonable speed. Go team! | | comments: 4 comments or Leave a comment |
| | Subject: | More | | Time: | 03:34 am |
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| Someone tagged me in a meme the other day. I forget who it was or what the meme was. Oh well.
First day at the new gig today. Turns out to be a bit of Small World Syndrome. The woman who I'm taking the job from happens to work for ScreenLife, which is a Seattle-based board game company.
That company has its offices at 1st Avenue and Jackson. In the summer of 2008, bothered by my lack of hours/pay at Imperial, I picked up a job sitting at a desk in that building. I only spent three months at the job.
We met again tonight in a little production meeting and looked at each other strangely. "You look familiar," she said, and I agreed. We couldn't really place each other until the end of the conversation.
Strangely, another ScreenLife employee is a frequent bowler out at West Seattle. It's strange, I've gotten to know these people more since working in their building than I did when I was, in fact, working there.
The gig is interesting, in that functionally I'll be having to watch a basketball game without really watching a basketball game. There's enough to keep you occupied over the course of the couple-hour game that you hardly take notice of the score, other than to know if it's close. I can see why my predecessor wanted to go watch the games and enjoy them instead of working the sound.
There's something socially interesting about the idea of working in places where most people go to have fun. I'm not sure what that is, but I'm probably going to pursue that thought a little bit. People go to the bowling alley or sporting event to enjoy themselves, but I work. Not that I don't enjoy my work, but it's clearly different from how our patrons enjoy themselves. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| Two thousand ten has been rough so far. I say somewhat jokingly that it's been a rough year, but I'm also a little worried that it's going to be like this. I think the problems are probably a little more "me" than "the world," though, but I do have some events from this month to consider.
1. The board game saga. I recently played the board game Dominion and found it to be interesting because of how the strategy of the game plays differently every time you play. Anyway, I tried to get a copy of it but couldn't track one down for a while. A Google search for "board game shop Seattle" really doesn't give me much that close in the city, so when I ended up at Southcenter Mall, I took a look for such a shop, and found one. Unfortunately, the store was out of the game. They said they'd have it in a couple of days. I was out that way a couple days later when they still didn't have it. I gave the manager my card, she told me that they would hold a copy for me when it arrived, then said that they had a copy at another store in the area and they'd have it in a couple days.
A couple of days became a week and I called them back, only to find out that they had accidentally sold the copy that they had been holding for me. I ended up finding the game elsewhere, but it cost me more money and it took me a week longer to pick it up than I had hoped. My parents and I have played five or six times and I have yet to win.
2. Overtime. As I have previously mentioned, work has been scheduling me for overtime hours every week since December with the exception of Christmas. I have logged over 45 hours in each of the last two weeks. It's going to be nice to see my next paycheck, which will be the largest of my life, but I'm also feeling pretty run down overall, especially because we've been having some freakishly busy nights recently.
3. Bowling. Don't I always have to mention bowling? Since a period of time in December where I posted two 700 series (I've only bowled a handful of those in my life), I've fallen off, averaging a 550 series for each week of the last month. Some of those weeks have been me throwing good shots and getting unlucky, some of those have been me off my game and doing just enough to not be bad. I went out tonight to throw some games -- 12 games in total -- and posted poor scores overall, but finally broke through on the last three games, scoring about 650 for the final three (better than 215 average).
4. Church. I'm on the Parish Life Committee for my church, which essentially means that I'm on the board that tries to hold intergenerational events and get people together. I'm doing a little research on how we can connect with each other through Facebook, but I'm meeting some resistance, which I think might be a touch of older folks being a little more worried about their privacy than they need to be.
5. Emotional junk. I've been pretty touchy overall. This was spiked off by the Monday a few weeks ago when the Board Game people above were failing me, I bowled like crap, and my laptop decided to get really crashy and lose data. I've fixed the board game problem and the laptop problem through software upgrades, but the emotional wonkiness remains. I have to wonder a little bit about how I'm dealing with nighttime and darkness. We don't have a lot of light in the winter anyway, and I tend to wake up at noon at the earliest, so I might not be taking in enough, or as winter wears on, my reserves have become somewhat depleted (even though the days are getting longer again). Or maybe I'm just working too much? It's hard to say, but I've been too easy to upset recently.
4. Relations. My bowling league is Tuesday nights, and across the alley is the Starbucks league. There's a woman in the league who I vaguely met through my boss maybe a couple weeks prior who has a really nice smile and is pretty cute. I introduced myself to her two weeks ago, said her smile was pretty, and she replied with a flustered "sorry," which probably means its going nowhere, but there was still the embarrassed/flustered thing, so it's hard to say 100%. I also found out, through my boss and his recon, that she recently broke up with a long-term boyfriend.
I wasn't at league last week because of my church meeting, but I will be there tomorrow. I don't really expect anything to happen, but I would like to get to meet her if I could, and find out who she is more than "what" she is (i.e., "A cute girl who goes bowling and works for Starbucks).
5. Internet. I use free dialup Internet service. Recently it has been completely unreliable. We'll dial the number and nothing will happen, Firefox will tell me it can't connect to anything, and basically my computer becomes mostly useless. It's been so bad that my mom, who only uses the computer for email and some vague shopping, is bothered by it. She has been bothered by it so much, in fact, that we're going to actually get Internet service through Comcast.
6. Physical Stuff. I'm learning how to play the position of Catcher for the upcoming baseball season. This has required me to work out my legs more than usual. I've been using the Wii Fit for that, doing 50 squats on each leg and some stretching as part of training. My foot, which has been bothering me since at least the end of October, has been acting up seriously in the last couple of days so that walking is sometimes painful. I'm seeing a doctor on Wednesday.
7. Finances. Working a lot has made me some extra money, but I also seem to be spending it at an alarming clip. I spent probably close to $200 to upgrade things on my laptop. I broke a baseball bat at practice and spent about $150 purchasing a couple of replacement bats that were on sale. I've moved some money ($200 so far) to save so that I can pay my baseball dues without it hurting my bottom line a couple months from now. I paid my credit card debt from Christmas, and also paid for gas a few times already this year so I could get myself down to Southcenter Mall those couple of times I was checking in on that board game. I put another charge on the credit card today so I could put letters and/or numbers on a bowling shirt and some baseball jerseys.
I suppose I have some justifications for my purchases, but a couple of them don't go any farther than "I just wanted it," which frustrates me a little. I haven't gotten behind on bills or anything, but I like to think of myself as more responsible than I've shown recently. But maybe that has to do with the emotional issues I wrote about earlier and wanting to do something just for the sake of doing something, y'know? I get restless. | | comments: 6 comments or Leave a comment |
| So long as work doesn't go badly tonight (cross your fingers), today goes on the very short list of best days of the year so far.
The reason for this is a phone call I received at about 12:30 this afternoon. The phone call came from a guy I worked with one night a couple of months ago when I did the public address announcing for a Seattle University basketball game at KeyArena. He called me because they were seeking someone to assist in Audio Operations on February 16. In addition, the gentleman works for the Seattle Storm of the WNBA as their Marketing and Events Coordinator, and they need someone to work for them in the same job during their regular season.
If I include all training dates and assume that I can make them all the phone call essentially landed me 21 gigs between now and the end of August.
Anyhow, printing up business cards may be one of the best decisions I have ever made. While I have been mostly unsuccessful making personal connections with the cards, I have made a couple of really cool and really random business connections just because I happen to have them on my person. Without the cards, I probably wouldn't have been called today. I also probably would not have gotten the Seattle U gigs, and I might not even have picked up the work at the bowling alley.
In any event, I have to say that it's really nice to be able to put something on my calendar and say "I'm going to be doing this" over the next couple of months. | | comments: 2 comments or Leave a comment |
| Friendslist!
I just read that the Presidents of the United States of America will be playing at the Showbox on Friday, February 12. Are you at all interested in going? | | comments: 4 comments or Leave a comment |
| I clocked out of work today to find that I logged 41 hours. My work calendar says that I was only supposed to work 39 hours this week. Woops! Turns out the schedule's math was wrong. I was, in theory, supposed to work 7 hours from 4pm to close today. Turns out that in reality, 4pm to close is a 9 hour shift, bringing my total from 39 to 41.
Functionally, the meaning of this is that I had scheduled overtime this week. I looked at the schedule for next week and, again, I'm scheduled for 42 hours. So I look back at the schedules for the last few weeks. Turns out that I've been scheduled for overtime every week from December 14 to now, with the exception of the Christmas week, in which we were closed during two of my regular days.
I think on the week of December 14 I performed the duties at the scoreboard for Seattle U's women's basketball game, so that's even more work in the bank.
I can't say that I want to work less.... I still get my days off, and I'm not working any shifts longer than 11 hours, but I'm just tired and my energy level hasn't quite been there where I like it on my days off or (especially) early on in my shifts. I gotta do something about this, but I really don't know what yet. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| 2010. And so it begins.
I'm a little skeptical about 2010. I don't know. It seems to me that basically every year of my life this far had some certainty to it. In some sense, certainty is folly because a lot of different things can happen, both amazingly wonderful and terribly catastrophic, that can upend certainty in a heartbeat, but so far it's been "Okay, so by the end of this year I will have left completed X-level education and be in the middle of Y-level education," with the possible exception of last year, but last year I mostly had it figured that I wouldn't be in grad school anymore.
So I don't really know what's going to happen this year. I've got some things I'm figuring on, like I expect that I'll be visiting Salem again in February, May and probably a couple times in the winter, the Bay Area in April, and there's a decent possibility that I'll be watching baseball in Seattle after October 1 for the first time in nine years.
Other than that, my relationships are unclear. Maybe I'll meet someone new, maybe I won't. My job, though steady, is not enough long term. Maybe I'll get a new job in 2010. Maybe I won't. Maybe I'll get a new job and hate it. Maybe I'll find an internship in a college sports information department. Maybe I'll relocate. Hopefully I won't, because I like it here.
Maybe none of this will happen and I'll just go through 2010 like I have the last couple of months, and I'll put in 40-hour weeks and keep trying to pay down my student loan debt.
Perhaps I'm a little afraid of inaction. I suppose that won't surprise many of you. I want to feel like I'm progressing, that I'm learning new skills and developing in a way that's going to help me achieve a long-term career that makes me happy. If I'm not doing any of that, I feel like I'm losing time... and if I lose too much time, I won't be able to get that career or sense of accomplishment that I want.
Two thousand nine was pretty good for me. If it were any better, I think it would have been cheating. Two thousand ten does not have to be as good as 2009 to be a success. All I really need to do is make sure that I don't just spin my wheels. | | comments: 1 comment or Leave a comment |
| | Mary and I were sorta chatting about this today, and I couldn't find previous results of mine, so I did it again. ( here ) | | comments: 6 comments or Leave a comment |
| It's been a couple of months since I toyed with the million-dollar idea, trying to create an algorithm to select baseball players with the goal of getting a hit every day.
At the moment, I'm looking at ( potential success rates. ) | | comments: Leave a comment |
| Those non-baseball fans in the audience, please bear with me. There is fruit for you at the end of this.
It is the offseason. In the offseason, teams offer contracts to players around the league who just concluded their previous contracts, and attempt to swap personnel with other teams to try to build their roster for the next season.
Word today is that the Mariners are looking at Chone (pronounced like the name Shawn) Figgins. Figgins most recently played for the Angels, a hated divisional rival down in Southern California.
On the M's blog, someone made this comment about the potential contract:
"We sign Figgins and I'm buying his jersey stat. It’ll be like Magus joining your party in Chrono Trigger." | | comments: 1 comment or Leave a comment |
| I almost forgot about this from the other night, but I was reminded by being up really early today (Black Friday, I'm trying to find a cheap but valuable gift for my parents. Ugh).
It's not very often that listening to sports radio makes anyone really think. There's a lot of silliness, anti-intellectualism, cliched statements ... all in all, sports radio is about as useful to one's life as reality television.
ESPN Radio has a program called "The Sporting Life," which I had the pleasure of catching the end of on Wednesday-into-Thursday night just before 3:00am on Thursday. The last main segment on the program was a story about a girl in high school who was an excellent volleyball player and then got pregnant.
Unfortunately, I can't remember many of the specific details of the story, and a transcript doesn't appear to be available, but I'll give you a short recap of what I remember. There's also a preview of the piece here.
The main crux of the whole thing was the the girl and her family are fighting the schools regarding how they dealt with her pregnancy, especially in relation to her playing interscholastic sports and Title IX -- the famous legislation that led to the proliferation of women's sports in high schools and colleges. Among the issues were that the girl was kept from continuing her participation in the sport due to a lot of administrative nonsense, and when she was ultimately cleared to play by doctors, the coach severely limited her playing time. Aside from this, the coach also apparently disclosed information about her pregnancy to her teammates in violation of privacy rights, thereby damaging her reputation with the team.
I listened to this and wondered to myself, well, if I were in the coach's shoes, what would I do? What is the role of the coach in this situation? The girl in question gave some sound bites to the radio segment that included that she would have to approach volleyball a little differently. In particular, when you're pregnant, it's a pretty poor idea to dive into a hardwood floor in order to try to keep a ball in play. I recall that the segment said that she was an excellent volleyball player who played the full rotation on the court, suggesting that she could play both offensively (mainly being in charge of hitting the ball over the net) and defensively (mainly in charge of keeping the ball from hitting the ground).
Basically, if I'm a volleyball coach and I find out that one of my players is pregnant, I will be inclined to reassign her role in a way that limits the potential of hurting the fetus. If I'm the coach of that volleyball team, I feel that I am responsible for my players' physical well-being, and I should take any reasonable measure to make sure that my players are not putting themselves in unnecessary peril, and especially so when I'm the coach of a high school team.
I'll try to pull up some details on this one, but I'm curious to get your reactions. In particular, I want to know if I'm being an overprotective male figure. I doubt that I'm going to change my mind based on hearing that opinion, but at least I'll know that about myself if it's true. | | comments: 3 comments or Leave a comment |
| Albert Pujols (pronounced "poo-holes" for all non-baseball fans out there) just won his second National League Most Valuable Player award, recognizing his outstanding 2009 season. I caught a piece of the press conference on ESPN regarding this, and Pujols said something to the effect of "I have one ring [World Series Championship], but I've got ten fingers, so that means I need nine more."
This year, unfortunately, the New York Yankees won the World Series. It was their first since 2000, and their 27th title overall since the inception of Major League Baseball. The American League, of which the Yankees are a member, began in 1901. Yankees management has exhibited a ridiculous ability to spend money in search of baseball's top talent in order to win the World Series -- a process many baseball fans consider to be "buying the championship." That they only did so twice in the Aughts is something of poetic justice, considering the craziness that is the Yankee player payroll.
With apologies to Ichiro, Alex Rodriguez, Joe Mauer, Felix Hernandez, Roy Halladay, and many others, Albert Pujols may be the best player actively playing in MLB. If he takes his services to the free market, the Yankees will most likely offer him the largest sum of money and the greatest probability of winning the nine championships that he desires, however I fear that it will damage his, and baseball's, reputation.
As a Mariner fan, I would love it if we could find a way to pick up Albert from the St. Louis Cardinals, because it would almost assuredly mean that the Mariners would be more likely to win games and championships in the future. On the other hand, I would feel somewhat empty about it.
It strikes me that a player should spend his career with the team he makes his name with. If Joe Mauer left the Minnesota Twins to play for the Yankees, New York Mets, Boston Red Sox, the LA Dodgers, or a number of other teams, I think it would ultimately be a sad day for baseball. If Evan Longoria leaves Tampa, I think it'd be a sad day for baseball. I think it was a sad day for baseball when Jeremy Giambi left Oakland to play for the Yankees, when Ken Griffey Jr. left Seattle to play for the Cincinnati Reds, or Johnny Damon moving from Boston to New York, or when Mike Piazza was traded from Los Angeles to Florida to the Mets. What about all the great players who left Montreal? Randy Johnson? Pedro Martinez? Larry Walker? At least two of those three are Hall of Fame caliber.
Building a baseball team should be about being smart, like the Mariners picking up Franklin Gutierrez from Cleveland, not about being rich, like the Yankees signing Mark Teixiera, CC Sabathia, and A.J. Burnett last offseason. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| Do you ever look back at things in your life and notice how certain things you're doing now are only possible because of a number of situations that you've been in?
I worked as a Public Address announcer at a basketball game at KeyArena on Sunday. This happened primarily because I met a guy who works for Seattle University when I was at the Hurricane. I went to the Hurricane that night to take it easy after a night of working for Seattle Pacific University. I got a job at SPU because of the work I did for athletics at Willamette. I got a good review from the guy in athletics at Willamette because of work I did for him, especially last fall when I was in graduate school. I got the job in athletics at Willamette because Andrew Gibbs urged me to apply for it. I know Andrew Gibbs mostly because we happened to visit Willamette as prospies on the same weekend and I was carrying the SMILE sign. I think the SMILE sign got me into Willamette. I made the SMILE sign because my Language Arts Teacher in 11th grade wanted to read to us out loud and I felt that making that sign was the best way to cheer someone up across the room.
Crazy, innit?
In the meantime, things are in flux. I took the job at the bowling alley in February partly under the assumption that we could expand or may be interested in expanding and adding a third bowling center (the ownership has control of the one I work at and another north of Seattle). It appears, for the time being at least, that we are not going to expand. This is difficult for me because, while I make enough money to pay down my student loans, I do not make enough to live in my own place, which I desire.
I've been working in college athletics recently, and I think I've made some good connections and am building a bit of a name for myself as a capable worker across several platforms including public address and statistical input. At Sunday's basketball game, I sat next to a marketing professional who works for the Seattle Storm (and previously worked for the Sonics), who seemed to suggest that there are ways into the professional game as well.
So I'm asking myself a question: If I got offered a college sports media-relations job, a bowling alley manager job, or a professional sports marketing job, which would I take? I'm not entirely sure, and it seems to me that all three WON'T come at the same time, but where should I angle myself? It's an interesting thought, and I'm not particularly looking for answers from others, but I just thought I'd share what's going on in my head on this one. | | comments: 4 comments or Leave a comment |
| I am becoming of the opinion that the newsmedia now tells us more about ourselves than it does about the actual news.
Take, for example, the recent news from China where President Obama bowed in respect in front of the Emperor of Japan. This news, in itself, doesn't tell us any more than how our President greeted a dignitary from another country, but some people are really freaking out about it.
So here's what I'm thinking: If you are flipping out about the fact that the President of the United States greeted a foreign dignitary with a respectful gesture common to the dignitary's country, you're probably an asshole.
Another example. You may have heard, read, or seen video about a collegiate women's soccer match. One of the participants, playing for the University of New Mexico, played the game in a spectacularly rough fashion, including several unnecessarily aggressive attempts on the ball, at least one punch to the back of an opposing player, and the money shot (if you'll forgive me the term): when she grabbed the ponytail of another player and pulled her to the ground.
My question in this, after having watched a bunch of soccer recently, was "Where the hell is the officiating? Those referees need suspending every bit as much as she did!" But that wasn't the reaction of many. In fact, on ESPN's "Pardon the Interruption," co-host Tony Kornheiser commented that many of the men who called his radio show that morning said that they would like to date her. (I guess because she likes it rough? Again with the "forgive the term")
If that's your reaction to that video, you're probably an asshole.
Now you may not be an asshole on either one, so please don't take this too personally if you happen to believe either one, but I feel that both of those positions are so divorced from reality that it's ridiculous and you should get that checked. | | comments: 5 comments or Leave a comment |
| I had an uncle pass away on November 1, while I was in New York. Before you get particularly sentimental and apologetic, I should let it be known that I was not close to this uncle in pretty much any fashion. He's attached to my dad's side of the family, whom I have generally not seen in the last seven or eight years, although I'm beginning to see them with greater frequency again because of things like this and my grandmother (dad's side) living in a nursing home over the last year.
Anyhow, the family held something of a memorial today, but, well, I don't know. There was no structure given to the event, the family simply had a big room open at the local Salvation Army and invited a bunch of people to basically come, be in it, and talk with each other. There was also a little paper that had a biography of my uncle in it.
Unfortunately, the biography had a number of questionable choices in it (if you have a two page summary of a person's life, is the fact that he once had "a black wooly monkey named 'Woolie'." really that important a detail?) and copy editing mistakes (eastern Washington is a region and should be written as I just typed it, not "Eastern, WA." as it is in the biography).
The event, in short, was basically everything that I would not want my own memorial to be. God forbid that it happen anytime in the near future, but if it should, please note a few things.
I want there to be an element of religion to my service. My church is important to me. I would like there to be music and singing. I would like there to be a recognition of sadness but an element of celebration. I would like there to be a point in the service to share stories. I wouldn't mind if there was a bio, but I'm not sure what should go into it... I get frustrated being known as just Smile Guy, or Haiku Writer, or Bowler, or Baseball Nut. I'd like Freaks N Geeks to be covered, but there's still more to me than that. I can't even get myself straight on what I want to present as myself all the time, so how could I expect someone else to?
Anyway, I'm expecting not to die in the near-term, but if I do for some reason, please keep these thoughts in mind. | | comments: 2 comments or Leave a comment |
| Sunday was long, and a bit intense.
I didn't get to sleep very well Saturday night. I'm not exactly sure why. If I had to guess at why, it would be because I didn't eat much on Saturday and was therefore low blood-sugar-y. That does it to a lot of people. I also was a little disappointed that I didn't get to go hang out Saturday night, go out to the Hurricane or whatever, because it was already 11pm when I got home and I had Sunday School to teach. Other than this, Saturday was pretty good, including playing flag football with baseball bloggers and having my baseball team's meeting in Bellevue that night. By the way, I'm going to learn how to catch for next season. Perhaps I should say goodbye to my knees.
So I taught Sunday School, and I wasn't all that prepared. Okay, whatever, I thought. Turns out we had more Kindergarteners and preschoolers (6) than I think we've had any week I've been there so far (and I've been there for four weeks). Okay, whatever, I thought. Turns out that the service ran long. Oof, a little bit. I had a bit of a lesson plan with me because the church provides us with one, but I improvised off of it and added a little game to try to extend our time. We did okay. It could have gone better, but all things considered, it went okay and I'm happy to not have that responsibility for a couple weeks.
I had my first adult bowling tournament tonight. It was a doubles nine-pin no-tap tournament, with handicap, and I bowled with my mom. Entry was $60 and the both of us bowled pretty damn well. I had a decent chance at throwing three perfect games (to clarify, that's because if you knocked down 9 it counted as a strike, not because I bowled out of my gourd). My mom beat me one game 236-239, and all-in-all we finished in 4th place, collecting $90 ($30 profit, $15 for each of us).
Right now, my main goal is to stay awake. I have a 6:15 flight out of Seattle to head to New York City for a week to see Elsa and do various things like see Avenue Q and the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY (which is a 4-hour drive away) for a week. I'll be back Monday night next week, scheduled for 9pm.
In Other News
I have purchased three tickets to go see John Oliver at the Snoqualmie Casino on Saturday, November 14th, at 8pm. At the moment, the three tickets are spoken for, however if you want to go, tickets can be found for $20 (+service fees) on ticketmaster. I would be happy to give you a ride so long as you're not ridiculously out of the way.
I am in the act of purchasing two tickets to KISS on the following day (Sunday, Nov. 15) at 7:30pm. The second ticket has not yet been spoken for. Drop me a line if you're at all interested in going. I would rather have someone purchase the second ticket from me, but if you would be willing to go if you could go free, let me know and I may just give it to you if I can't sell it. | | comments: 4 comments or Leave a comment |
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