Conor in Carolina

Guess Who's Snoring!

2010-02-02T18:36:00.000-08:00

Remember, your guess could offend someone — so guess carefully! :)

Movies I Want To See In 2010

2010-01-14T21:58:00.000-08:00

The Lovely Bones (January 15)

Tim Burton's Alice In Wonderland (in 3D) (March 5)
Should be a trip. Plus, my boy Matt McGovern worked on the 3D for this. Holla!

Date Night (April 9)

Iron Man 2 (May 7)

Robin Hood (May 14)

Get Him To The Greek (June 4)
This is a spinoff from "Forgetting Sarah Marshall." According to IMDB, the plot is: A record company intern (Jonah Hill) is hired to accompany out-of-control British rock star Aldous Snow (Russell Brand) to a concert at L.A.'s Greek Theater. Jason Segel wrote it, so you know it's going to be funny.

Toy Story 3 (June 18)

The Other Guys (August 6)
It's a cop flick starring Will Farrell, written by Adam McKay, who wrote Anchorman and Step Brothers. Uh....yes, please!

How To Make Love To A Woman (TBA)
This is my buddy Scott Culver's first feature film. Don't worry, it's not a porn. Apparently it's released in Japan now and the kinks are still being worked out over here. I may have to fly to Japan.

Black Hole (TBA)
Directed by David Fincher (who did one of my all-time favorites, "Se7en," this movie is based on a graphic novel by Chaarlie Burns and is about: "A group of high school students' lives are altered drastically when they come in contact with a sexually transmitted disease called the 'teen plague' or 'the bug.'"

Probably . . .

Edge Of Darkness (January 29)

Valentine's Day (February 12)

Shutter Island (February 19)

Cop Out (February 26)

A Nightmare On Elm Street (April 16)

Kick-Ass (April 16)

Grown Ups (June 25)

Megamind (November 5)
“When super villain Megamind (Will Ferrell) defeats his archrival Metro Man (Brad Pitt), the world should be his oyster. But instead, Megamind falls into total despair. It turns out that life without a rival is life without a purpose for him. So he creates a new superhero rival, Titan (Jonah Hill). Unfortunately for him and the world, the new hero wants to be a super villain too. The new villain begins his rampage, and Megamind sets out to stop him, beginning a path to redemption in the process.”

The Zookeeper (October 8)
"In "The Zookeeper," the animals at the zoo adore their caretaker Andrew (Kevin James), an amiable but lonely guy who's never quite fit in. Finding himself more comfortable with a lion than a lady, Andrew decides he should leave the zoo and get a life. When the zoo animals discover his plan they decide to break their code of silence and reveal their biggest secret: they can talk! Now they won't shut up and they're teaching Andrew nature's best mating rituals. To help him win the girl of his dreams (Rosario Dawson) and save their happy family they're willing to do - or say - anything."

Black Swan (TBA)
Actually, the description of this movie sounds awful: "A thriller that hones in on the relationship between a veteran ballet dancer and a rival." But, the ballet dancers just happen to be Mila Kunis and Natalie Portman.

Inception (July 16)

Skeptical, But Possible . . .

The A-Team (June 11)

The Three Stooges (TBA)
It's made by the Farrelly brothers (Dumb & Dumber, Something About Mary, etc.), so it's probably funny. But the Three Stooges are Sean Penn (Larry), Jim Carrey (Curly) and Benicio Del Toro (Moe). I'm not worried about Carrey, but the other two are kind of head scratchers.

MacGruber (April 23)
This bit is only mildly funny in one-minute bursts on SNL. Not sure it'll work over 90 minutes. Actually, I'm pretty sure it won't. But, I saw Hot Rod, so I'm sure I'll end up seeing this too. Prove me wrong, MacGruber. Hurry MacGruber!

Tis The Season!

2009-12-07T13:40:00.000-08:00

This is awesome!

YouTube Friday #1

2009-12-03T17:05:00.000-08:00

Back when I did a baseball blog (StopTheWave.com - R.I.P), I used to do a post every Friday called "YouTube Friday" and I would post about 5 baseball-related Fridays each week. So, with a lack of posts around here (apologies again! Work's been buys, blah blah blah), this will be a fun way to spark my posting here again and give people at least something to do around these parts once a week. So, without further ado, here are five videos to keep you entertained this weekend!

So...Tiger Woods has been in the news lately. A Chinese news station took it upon themselves to use CGI to re-inact what they think went down. Very entertaining! Apparently Tiger drives a mini-van. Who knew?

Saw this guy on Ellen and I want to give him a huge high five. My friend Mike Estes always wanted to do something similar to this, but we stuck to plagiarizing crappy werewolf videos instead.

Josh Sale is an outfielder at Bishop Blanchet HS in Seattle. He's ranked as the sixth-best HS prospect in the country by your's truly and if you're in the Seattle are this spring, do yourself a favor and go see him play. Dude's legit. I've watched this HR video about 50 times.

I didn't think I could like Taylor Swift any more than I already did, but then I found out she covers Rihanna songs and my favorite Eminem song live. She also did a hilarious rap with T-Pain during the last Country Music Awards and wrote her own monologue for SNL. I'm a huge fan and I'm not ashamed to admit it anymore.

Katy Perry covering one of my favorite songs ever.

Conor In Oahu

2009-11-01T14:44:00.000-08:00

I guess this probably goes without saying, but It's embarrassing how long this blog has been idle. Luckily, anyone reading this blog probably likes Cheryl more than me, and she started an awesome blog of her own that has picked up the slack (and then some). This blog kind of died right before the draft, when I got super busy and then I went to Hawaii and then got back and was busy throughout the summer.

But I did have an awesome time in Hawaii. It provided some much-needed fun and relaxation right after the draft and right before the stress that comes with moving across the country. So, I wanted to chronicle the trip here. Better late than never, right?

Cheryl's dad was nice enough to take us to Oahu as a Christmas gift. It was Kent and Kathy, me and Cheryl, Cheryl's brother Greg, his wife Kari and their three-year-old son, Max.

Kent and Kathy picked us all up at the airport and led the way to our awesome resort. Apparently Cheryl was the only one trustworthy enough to drive the rental car and she did a fabulous job all week. By the time we got to our room, it was already kind of late at that point, so we just got unpacked and settled in.

That was the view from our hotel room.

Day 1
The first day, we took it easy and just kind of explored what the resort had to offer. The resort has some man-made coves into the ocean, so we just floated in those and then hung out in the pools a little bit. It was nice to be in the sun and the warm water. Max had a blast and we all worked up an appetite, so we ate lunch at the little restaurant on location, played in the pools some more and then had some shave ice. That night, we barbecued some ribs and played some games in the room.

Day 2
On the second day, we decided to go snorkeling at Electric Beach. It's called Electric Beach because a power plant shoots really warm water into the ocean and the fish just love it. Although it was sometimes nauseating swimming through very warm currents of water, it was really neat to see all the fish. However, we kind of got caught up in the fun and didn't realize how far we had drifted out. Swimming back was quite a chore for me and there were actually a few moments I thought I was going to pass out. Cheryl thought I was going to die. After that, we went to Paradise Cove, a private beach that was a lot of fun for just floating and relaxing. While we were there, a sea turtle swam up very close to us and stuck its head out of the water to get some air, which was really cool. That night, Greg and I barbecued some steaks for everyone, which was awesome, then Greg, Kari, Cheryl and I went down for a night swim in the pool. Good times.

Day 3
We did some more snorkeling on the third day, this time at Shark's Cove. This was my favorite because we snorkeled for a long time, saw tons of fish (and more sea turtles) and I never felt that my life was in danger. After that, we went up to the North Shore for some lunch at Cholos. After that, we did a little shopping and then headed down the street for my first Matsumoto experience. I had heard Cheryl talk about Matsumoto Shave Ice for years and now I finally got to experience it for myself. Well, as usual, she was spot on....it was awesome.

The 30-minute wait was worth it, and it was fun to look at all the celebrity pictures inside the shop. Adam Sandler knows what's up when it comes to shave ice. After that, we went home, showered up and then took in a Hawaiian show on the resort lawn, which was really entertaining, before heading to a nice dinner with everyone at the Ialani resort. It was here that Cheryl discovered that whenever Max got upset or fussy, he would quickly calm down if she pulled up interesting YouTube videos on her iPhone. More on that later...

It was a long day and the dudes fell asleep in the back of the car.

Day 4
On the fourth day, we drove back up to the North Shore in the morning for a day of beaches. We first stopped at Waimea, but didn't park because there weren't any spots. Maybe if I go back to Oahu, I'll have the balls to jump off the huge rock. Probably not. Then we went to Pipeline and watched some surfers for a little bit. When we got back to the car, we saw something that has (unfortunately) been burned into my brain. This guy...

After that, we played in Sunset Beach for a little while and then it was on to Pounders, where I got....pounded. It certainly lived up to the hype. Every time you get hit with a huge wave, it knocks you underwater and right when you get back up, you have about a split second to catch your breath before you get knocked over again. I finally had to call it a day when I was losing my breath and did a double summersault underwater. It was fun while it lasted though.

When you're at the beach, always remember to wear sunscreen!

After everyone had their fill at Pounders, we went and got some lunch at the L&L Drive-In. Greg and I thought it was pretty good. The girls? Not so much. We also got a Taro Pie at McDonalds, which was interesting. I think I'll stick to apple, though. Then we went on a little tour of BYU-Hawaii, where Greg and Kari met. We also stopped at a grocery store for a few things, which is only worth mentioning because of what happened after, in the parking lot. It was a long day and Max was tired and started to whine a little in the car, as we were leaving the store. Cheryl quickly pulled up a Spongebob video on her phone and handed it to Max.

What she didn't realize was that, apparently, people like to redub Spongebob videos with a bunch of swear words and accidentally set him up with this video...

We were talking and didn't realize our error until 2:08 into this thing! All puns aside, Max is a sponge at this point and repeats a lot of things he hears (like Black Eyed Peas songs!). So, if he starts calling Greg an "assbag," blame Cheryl.

After that we tried to hit up Matsumoto again, but the line was too long even for us, so we found Leonard Jr.’s hot malasada truck. Mmmmm.

We drove back to the hotel after that, barbecued some chicken for dinner then played games. While we were barbecuing, I overheard a guy at the grills tell his wife, "I wish they made a cologne that smelled like this." ...a joke I made a couple nights earlier. Don't think I didn't notice, dude.

Max loved Matsumoto, but was also very content with Otter Pops in the hotel room!

Day 5
On the fifth day, we headed to Aloha Stadium for some flea market action. We walked around for a few hours and it all starts to blend together, because everyone’s basically selling the same stuff.

After that, I texted Hawaii’s assistant baseball coach and asked him where to find the island’s best plate lunch. He recommended the Rainbow Drive-In. We tried to find it using my phone, but somehow got a wrong address or something and ended up nowhere close to the actual location. Thankfully, some nice locals told us we weren’t close and were even nice enough to lead us to the right spot…which was about a 10-minute drive. But before they decided to just drive us there, they gave me a handwritten map on a piece of paper from their car. The paper was a receipt from a recent oil change, so of course I Googled the name on the receipt when I got home and was shocked to see the results. The guy on the invoice was a teenager in Hawaii that was recently put away for murder. Was that his family driving his car while he was in the slammer? I’ll never know for sure, but that was kind of weird. We actually tried to send a Rainbow Drive-In gift certificate to the address from the invoice, but it got returned. Anyway…it was a good plate lunch. Good call, coach!

After lunch, we walked around Waikiki for a little bit and went back to the hotel to chillax. That night, Greg, Kari, Cheryl and I went out to dinner by ourselves, while Kent and Kathy hung back and watched Max. We went to Roy’s and it was awesome. I had a special that included salmon, steak and shrimp and it was probably one of the best meals I’ve ever had.

After dinner we went back to the resort for another night swim. Greg may or may not have ran into the ocean naked.

Day 6
This morning we tried to go snorkeling at one of the beaches on the resort. Kent had a good experience there the day before, but we didn’t have such luck. I lost my mask trying to get into the really choppy water and Kari got scraped up. I didn’t get far enough in to see anything, but even those that did said it was too mucky to see any fish. Oh well. We went back and just kind of hung out in one of the coves before going back up for lunch.

We got cleaned up and then headed back up to the North Shore for one last trip to Matsumoto. This time, Greg got his with the red azuki beans, which I decided tasted like hot dogs. Not a good combo. After that, we went to the Polynesian Cultural Center to walk around before the PCC’s show that night. That was a lot of fun. The PCC has a bunch of different areas, each one dedicated to a Polynesian island. In “Tonga,” I got selected to come up on stage and try my hand at some drumming. It was rad.

The buffet was good and the show, “Horizons,” was a lot of fun. I especially enjoyed the drumming, fire twirling and girls shaking their hips.

Day 7
It was time to check out of the resort. So, we got out of there and headed up to Pali Lookout, because even though we had to check out, our flight was a red-eye, so we had the whole day to kill. The lookout was cool, then we went and had some lunch, then went back to Waikiki and walked around a little more.

For dinner, we decided on Duke’s, which was great, but the highlight of the night actually happened on the walk to dinner. As we were walking through downtown Waikiki, there were pigeons everywhere, especially on the sidewalk near other outdoor eateries. As we walked by the Cheesecake Factory, there were a lot of pigeons and I pretended to kick one. When it didn’t even flinch, I decided to stop messing around and really kicked it. That got its attention and it started flying….right up Kathy’s skirt! She let out a blood-curdling scream right in my ear, as she grabbed onto my arm and wet her pants in terror.

Overall, it was an awesome trip and I can’t wait to go back someday!

Big News

2009-07-23T22:13:00.000-07:00

Cheryl has her own blog now! Sure, we could have just both blogged here, but that would have required a name change...and her blog's name was just too good to waste: NorthCherylina

So head over there now for a recap of what she's been up to since leaving WA and a video tour of our new apartment. Bookmark it, love it, leave lots of comments, just don't forget about me...

Dude At The Airport

2009-06-16T19:25:00.000-07:00

This was so funny. I wasn't the only photographer...

Rollergirls

2009-06-07T12:44:00.000-07:00

I went with my friend Jeff and his friend Rochelle to go see a Carolina Rollergirls double header last night. I was a little skeptical but, honestly, it was awesome and I quickly became a fan. Don't knock it till you try it!

Basically, there's two teams of five girls skating around a flat, oval track. Each team essentially has two positions: four "blockers" and one "jammer." There's actually three blockers, a "pivot" and a jammer, but I don't really know what a pivot does. Anyway, the goal is to get your jammer to the front of the pack, at which point, they can skate around and rack up points by crossing various lines. Eventually they'll get back into the pack and it starts over again. The blockers are trying to clear lanes for their jammers while, at the same time, trying to block the other team's jammer. Really, it sounds more complicated than it is.

We watched 2 games and each game consists of two, 30-minute halves. The first game was Carolina vs. Gotham Girls All-Stars (2008 National Champs). They were LEGIT. Gotham won and the score was something like 181-34. Then it was Carolina (same team, but different girls) vs. River City Rollergirls from Richmond, Virginia. That was a lot closer, but Carolina lost again, 81-76 (or something).

The skaters have cool names like Penelope Bruz, Trudy Struction, Eye Candy Stroy, Kama Suture, Scariett Tubman, Surly Temple, and Barbara Ambush.

I thought of a few names of my own: Slamma Montana, Ann Uerysm & if there were a republican rollergirl, she could be Sarah M. Palin.

Here's a video...

Wow, I suck

2009-05-27T10:13:00.000-07:00

Sorry I haven't updated in a while. With the draft being just two weeks away I have been amazingly busy and it's going to be crazy for a while, even after the draft because of Hawaii, moving Cheryl and all our stuff out here, finding a place to live, summer tournaments and showcases to cover, weddings, etc. But I can't complain. Life is good, even if I've been bad about posting the details here.

I'm going to Florida tomorrow for the weekend and I'll only post something if I see an alligator...

Ranking NOFX Albums

2009-05-09T18:06:00.001-07:00

I was talking to my friend Matt today about the new NOFX CD and how much I like it. We were talking about how it compared to their other albums, so I decided to rank them, starting with my least favorite (though I like all listed here, obviously) and going down to my favorite. NOFX has been a band for almost 30 years and they're still putting out awesome, important music. They're definitely one of my favorites and it makes me proud and happy that my friends and I still listen the same stuff that bonded us in junior high.

So, here's my order, with the caveat that I only focused on post-S&M Airlines full-lengths (because, let's get serious, who likes Maximum Rocknroll, Liberal Animation or S&M Airlines?). I also thought it would get too hairy to try and rank EPs (though The Decline would be No. 1), live CDs and B-Side compilations.

Here they are with Haiku reviews...

9) Ribbed
Silliness begins
You can hear the potential
Just a bit too raw

8) Wolves In Wolves Clothing
Big disappointment
I still have the CD, but...
Erased from iTunes

7) White Trash, Two Heebs & A Bean
Hefe's first full-length
Guitars still sound too '80s
Getting close to greatness

6) Heavy Petting Zoo
Too slow, kinda meh
The cover grossed out my dad
Songs you don't hear live

This is where it gets really tough for me....

5) Pump Up The Valuum
Lots of great songs here
Don't be fooled by the low rank...
I still love this disc

4) So Long And Thanks For All The Shoes
Sixteen diverse songs
In just 32 minutes
Mike's bass never better

3) Coaster
25 years strong
They're just as good as ever
Could be number two

2) The War On Errorism
Really good balance
Angry, but still funny too
Cheryl loves this one

1) Punk In Drublic
Ahh, my first real love
Takes me back to junior high
Good times, Oi! Oi! Oi!

Picture Party!

2009-05-09T00:37:00.000-07:00

I've heard from a few different people lately that one of the things they like about my blog is when I post pictures of what I've eaten lately. So I decided to do a post cleaning out the pics from my camera phone, which includes a few restaurants (both new and old) as well as a few other funny things I've seen lately. Enjoy!

First, the food...

This is from a Persian kabob place I went to a couple weeks ago with my buddy. The meat on the left looks like a turd and wasn't very good. The meat on the right is lamb and was just okay, but kinda fatty. Also, I was expecting (hoping?) the bread underneath would be like nan, but it was hard and crunchy and tasted like sesame seeds. Really nothing special, overpriced, won't go back...

This is a sandwich from Which Wich? on The Ave. That place was amazing and I was glad to find out it's a franchise and there's one in Raleigh. This is their sandwich called "The Elvis" and, as you can see, it's peanut butter, honey and banana. So delicious!

This lovely spread is from my very favorite Vietnamese restaurant on The Ave called Thanh Vi, a true Seattle gem that I miss and always try to hit up when I'm back home. I used to eat there all the time when I worked on The Ave (no joke...10 days straight at one point, which I've never done with any other restaurant). Love this place. Great food, cheap, very friendly (the woman there remembered me after not being in for more than a year—even asked about Cheryl). Just writing this is making me wish I could go there tomorrow! This is a "small" bowl of pho & a beef Vietnamese sandwich. Normally I would just get one or the other, but when I get the opportunity to visit Thanh Vi these days, I have to pig out and get both.

Last night I got a serious craving for some authentic, taco-truck tacos. My favorite Durham food blog, Carpe Durham, loves taco trucks more than I and apparently Durham is thriving with Mexican food on wheels. So much so that the Carpe Durham peeps have made a "Tacomentary" about the situation...

So I drove up to North Durham and got me some tacos. The drive took about 15 or 20 minutes, of course I had to take out cash because I never have any and I got a little freaked out by a Dog The Bounty Hunter-looking dude with a Hells Angels belt buckle at the gas station, but once I bit into my first taco, I knew the voyage was worth it! I got four tacos because ~~I'm fat~~ I couldn't decide what kinds I wanted to try. I got Mexican barbecue, asada, pastor and chicken. Pastor and asada were the best, chicken was the worst because it was dry, but all were delicious and hit the spot.

This is a Chicago dog & cheese fries. I love Chicago dogs—loaded up all the way, but I've only had them before at Matt's Famous Chili Dogs. This was was actually in Chicago. Granted, it was just in the airport, so I'm not really counting it until I have one from in the city somewhere, but it was still pretty dang good. I really suck at eating local cuisine though. Didn't have crab cakes when I was in Baltimore and didn't have either a Chicago dog or deep-dish pizza when I was in Chi-city. Lesson learned: I've had tons of North Carolina barbecue to make up for past mistakes.

And now for something completely different!

Cooper is awesome!

Wacky space toilets at O'Hare. I've never seen these before. There's disposable plastic film that rotates on a new cover for each use to ensure a clean, sanitary seat. Fernando—was this a deciding factor in moving to Chicago?

A license plate I saw in the Starbucks parking lot the other day (click on it to make it bigger). Did a double take. The young, Asian female kinda mean-mugged me she noticed I was taking a photo, but that's what you get...

How exciting!

2009-04-19T10:18:00.001-07:00

BeanBoozled!

2009-04-08T23:00:00.000-07:00

Last week, when I was at home, Jon, Jen & the girls came up to visit. As always, it was really great to see them. They always have such funny stories saved up, which is why I've been lobbying for them to start a family blog (any help in this effort would be greatly appreciated). They recently took a trip down to California for a family vacation to Disneyland and they also stopped off in Fairfield, Calif. to tour the Jelly Belly factory. They said it was really neat and told us about how it takes two weeks to make a jelly bean (probably why they're expensive ... which reminds me of the time in high school when all my buddies worked at Target and got us a ton of Jelly Belly tins after easter for a penny apiece. Good times!) and how any beans that are too big or too small aren't stamped with the name and are sold at the factories as "Belly Flops." They also brought us some "treats" from the factory—Jelly Belly's latest gross-out beans in a box called BeanBoozled. The idea behind the BeanBoozled boxes is that there are 10 different colors of beans in the box and each color can either be a good flavor or a wretched one. See for yourself...

So, right after breakfast, as we were all sitting around the table, I decided to crack the box open, sort them out by color and start playing Jelly Belly roulette. I almost threw up my pancakes. In my opinion, here are the flavors, from worst to "best": rotten egg, vomit, skunk spray, moldy cheese, booger, baby wipes, pencil shavings, ear wax, toothpaste & pepper.

Jon was man enough to try them too...

The story that won't die

2009-04-02T20:29:00.001-07:00

Evening Magazine talked about our gnome prank for April Fool's Day yesterday...

Click here to watch!

A Face For Radio

2009-03-30T11:56:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I was a guest on a fantasy baseball internet radio show called RotoExperts Think Tank. I had to wake up at 8 in the morning to do this (after going to bed at like 3:30), so I blame my random babbling on the fact that I was really tired. But, if you still want to give it a listen, here you go. I start about 1/3 of the way through the show and you can fast forward by just clicking on the progress bar...

I Got Surv'd

2009-03-05T20:10:00.000-08:00

Kari tagged me for a belated Valentine's Day survey, so here goes nothing...

1. Where did you meet your wife?
Cheryl's a year younger, but we went to junior high and high school together. We didn't hang in junior high, but I knew some of her friends. During my senior year in high school, my friends and I would often drive by Caroline as she was walking home from school and would oftentimes exchange waves. After one of the friendly drive-bys, my friends and I actually had a conversation that went something like this: "Hey, we should hang out with that group of girls—they seem really cool." They must have been thinking the same thing, because around the same time, Cheryl was on my sister's softball team and sent me a Happy Birthday e-mail out of the blue. So, our groups of friends started hanging out frequently, I got a crush on Cheryl and we started dating soon thereafter...

2. How long did you date before you were married?
A long time. We were friends for like a year and a half, then started dating the summer after my freshman year of college. So...five years.

3. How long have you been married?
972 days.

4. What does she do that surprises you?
She remembers EVERYONE'S birthday. I'm talking random-ass people we haven't talked to since junior high or high school. She's like Rain Man.

5. What is your favorite feature of hers?
There are a lot to choose from, but I'm especially fond of her adorable dimples!

6. What is her best quality?
Cheryl's the complete package. She's extremely kind and caring, she's smart, she's supportive, honest, down-to-earth, fun to hang out with, a great cook and well-organized (which is great, because I'm certainly not). But, what I like best is her awesome sense of humor. That girl cracks me up on a daily basis.

7. Does she have a nickname for you?
Let's see...Mostly just Con and Hubb Rubb.

8. What is her favorite food?
Mongolian Beef from P.F. Chang's.

9. What is her favorite sport?
I'm guessing "So You Think You Can Dance" doesn't quite count, so I'll say volleyball.

10. When and where did you first kiss?
Ha! This is actually disputed. I say in her car, she says at her house. But, since she knows Shavon Jones' birthday, we should probably trust her memory over mine...

11. What is your favorite thing you do as a couple?
Lazy weekends together.

12. Do you have any children?
Just names, so far. We'll see if we can keep dogs alive first...

13. Does she have any hidden talents?
Aside from the birthday thing? She's really good at Guitar Hero, she can tie cherry stems in a knot with her tongue and can do funny impressions of really random people.

14. How old is she?
26

15. Who said "I love you first"?
Cheryl did, but the feeling was mutual.

16. What is her favorite music?
Pop punk, '80s & Phantom of the Opera soundtrack.

17. What do you admire most about her?
I admire her strength. Cheryl's been forced to deal with a lot of things, but she's not bitter or spiteful. She's just a really, really good person.

18. What is her favorite color?
Cerulean blue

19. Will she read this?
Oh fo' sho'!

20. I tag...
Kelly, Katie & Trisha

North Carolina's Vern Fonk

2009-03-01T22:49:00.000-08:00

You be the judge...who's worse?

FAIL

2009-02-28T21:52:00.000-08:00

I didn't think these Hardee's commercials could get any more repulsive...and then they compared their burger to a dick.

Bumper Sticker

2009-02-27T21:54:00.000-08:00

Saw this bumper sticker tonight in the parking lot when I went to dinner. Talked to the guy in the car and he was a real grouchy old white guy with too much cologne. Apparently he made 100 of these for all of his friends.

Slumdog Millionaire

2009-02-24T20:26:00.000-08:00

I went and saw Slumdog Millionaire tonight. Despite the hype, I actually went in with mixed expectations because on the way to the theater, Cheryl told me a couple friends saw it and said it didn't live up to the hype. To protect the guilty, I won't mention their names because I was blown away. I absolutely loved it. I would see it again tomorrow, in a heartbeat. If you haven't seen it yet, do it ASAP. It's everything a good movie should be. It's gut-wrenching, heart-warming, thought provoking, powerful, funny, dramatic, entertaining and educational all at the same time. Even though most people think they know the ending, it still managed to be captivating and suspenseful. It's a great story, visually stimulating, the acting is fantastic and, as a bonus, Freida Pinto (shown above) is just stunning. Two thumbs way up—this movie deserves it all.

Three crazy things I saw yesterday

2009-02-22T22:44:00.001-08:00

1) On the way home from the game, I took an exit looking for a BBQ joint that I had seen billboards for. Of course it was closed, but I saw a drive-thru convenience store. It's not a drive-thru like McDonalds, where you drive next to the building...you actually drive through the damn thing! If you think about it, that pretty much makes all the other "convenience" stores pretty inconvenient.

2) A UNC Baseball billboard. I was pretty surprised by that. I know I haven't seen a UW baseball billboard, but I'm trying to think if I've even seen a Mariners billboard...

3) This huge chair (notice the mini van for scale). I've actually seen these (there are two) before from the freeway, but this time I actually took the exit and tracked them down...

Cheryl's last visit

2009-02-22T18:39:00.000-08:00

I've been lazy on the blogging lately, but I had an awesome long weekend with Cheryl last week. Cheryl couldn't get a flight out on Friday night, so she toughed it out and hopped on a 6 a.m. flight on Saturday morning. She got in at about 4:30 and we hung out for a bit before heading to P.F. Chang's for a nice Valentine's Day dinner. After that, we came home and had a relaxing evening of cribbage and movies.

On Sunday, we met a friend and his girlfriend for lunch at Mama Dip's, which was awesome. For the drive out to Chapel Hill, I downloaded the new Lonely Island CD, which is awesome. After lunch, we headed to Frankie's Fun Park for some mini golf. I won't lie...Cheryl schooled me (48 to 54).

Here she is after shooting a hole-in-one...

The place also had some nasty, fake blue water...

After that, Cheryl and I headed home to nap and chill. That night, we went to dinner at Jason's Deli and then just chilled some more—watching the season 14 premiere of The Amazing Race and then the new shows on MTV. I rubbed Cheryl's feet for an entire HALF HOUR for losing at mini golf!

The best part about Cheryl's trip out is that is was for more than just a weekend! She lined up the trip with her school's mid-winter break, so she was able to stay until Wednesday morning. I was able to take Monday off because it was President's Day, which was great. Cheryl and I slept in and then headed over to Sutton's Drug Store in Chapel Hill. That place is awesome. You step in and you kind of feel like you're going back in time to the '50s. On Monday afternoon, we looked at some available houses and condos online. There are some really cute ones, but here's a tip for home sellers. If the best picture you have of your backyard "pool" looks like this, just skip the picture...

I had to go to work on Tuesday and Cheryl pranked me by changing my desktop picture to something that shows two of my least-favorite things about the Mariners. If only the fans were doing the wave in the background, she would have had an awesome trifecta! Damn, she's funny!

We went to dinner that night at a friend's house, which was a lot of fun. Cheryl headed back to Seattle on Wednesday morning and the countdown begins again...34 days until we see each other again!

Wii so horny

2009-02-18T19:43:00.001-08:00

This SNL skit the other night almost made me pass out...

Mixed Feelings on Griffey

2009-02-18T18:51:00.000-08:00

I don't talk much about baseball around here, but I wanted to share my thoughts on Ken Griffey Jr. returning to Seattle.

The Mariners have signed Griffey—apparently for real this time—and I have mixed feelings.

I'll preface this by saying Ken Griffey Jr. essentially defines my childhood. I moved to Seattle in 1990 as a seven-year-old, so yeah it was natural to latch onto The Kid.

Actually, I even liked him before moving to Seattle. I remember going to a baseball card shop in New England and getting his rookie card ... only to have Megan accidentally sit on it on the drive home.

Griffey was my favorite player. I would always stop what I was doing when he came to the plate. I loved watching him hit back-to-back home runs with his dad, hit home runs in eight-consecutive games and bang one off the warehouse in the home run derby at Camden Yards.

Griffey even tossed me a ball once in the Kingdome and I was lucky enough to watch him play in a charity basketball game against the teachers at my school.

I loved watching him make acrobatic catches, joke around with other players and his smile at the bottom of the dog pile after The Double is the exclamation point on my favorite baseball memory of all time.

I'm man enough to admit that I cried as I welcomed him back to Seattle a couple of years ago when he came to town with the Reds.

So, sure, a part of me likes it because seeing him in an M's uniform again will just feel good.*

But, there's not a nostalgia column in the standings and I think it's counterproductive for the direction of this team. Sometimes you should just love the past and move on.

Griffey isn't the player many in Seattle will expect him to be. He shouldn't be allowed to play the outfield and is useless against lefties (.202/.299/.350 over 187 PAs last year).

Like Dave said the other day at USSMariner, if Griffey is willing to DH against righties, this could end up being the best of both worlds. It would appease the fans that want to party like it's 1995 and could help the team win games.

If, however, he's playing the field and getting regular at-bats against lefties, I think this situation could be kind of be like seeing your grandparents in the old folks home, when they don't know your name and have to have their diapers changed. It's nice to see them ... but your final memories will be forever tainted.

But, in general, I'm excited. Someone better find that old Naughty By Nature CD quick!

*Unless it's these uniforms.

Random thoughts

2009-02-09T21:25:00.000-08:00

Random thoughts from the day, since it's been a while without an update (sorry Mom!)

• I never realized making fresh squeezed orange juice was so hard. It doesn't help that I already have a sore hand from opening my thermos, but damn that was strenuous. Better be worth it!
• That's what I'll be having for breakfast tomorrow morning. Well, that, and a yogurt parfait (organic french vanilla yogurt with granola and fresh blueberries). Cheryl told me that I bought a bunch of "stoner food" during my last grocery shopping trip. Eggo waffles, trail mix, grilled cheese Uncrustables...maybe she has a point.
• I watch way too much Jon & Kate Plus Ei8ht
• My job is freaking awesome. Now that all of our books are off to the printers, I can finally start focusing on the task at hand. I was absolutely stunned today when I looked at the clock and it was already 5 p.m. The days just fly by.
• My XBox 360 has been magically working like a charm lately (knock on wood).
• Here are a few awesome web sites I've found lately: F My Life (R-rated), This Is Why You're Fat, & JacksonPollock.org
• At work today, I found out that Scottsdale Community College's mascot is the Fighting Artichoke. That's awesome!
• Playing poker on Friday night was a lot of fun and I'd like to play recreationally more often. I know the guys at work have talked about getting a game going & I think that would be a blast.
• Jeff and I are going to see Tim Barry on the 28th.
• I've become addicted to Facebook lately. A few frustrating design gripes aside, it's not even funny how much better it is than MySpace. In fact, the only thing MySpace really has going for it is MySpace Music.
• I'm sure most of you have seen the "David After the Dentist" viral video, but if you haven't, do yourself a favor!
• The weather has been absolutely gorgeous lately. I can't wait to get my new bike out here!
• Five days until Cheryl comes out to visit!!!

Garbage Pail Kids

2009-02-05T19:04:00.000-08:00

I forgot to blog about this earlier, but I watched The Garbage Pail Kids Movie over Christmas break and it was awesome. My niece got it in our annual white elephant exchange and was nice enough to give it to uncle Con Con. Greg and I watched it late one night (like 3 a.m.) and laughed our heads off. As you can tell from the photo, it basically defines the "so bad it's good" genre. If you ever need a little "laughter midnight" viewing, give it a shot.

Super Bowl commercials

2009-02-01T20:10:00.000-08:00

Here were my three favorite Super Bowl commercials. How about you?

CareerBuilder.com

Doritos

Hulu.com

One productive Saturday!

2009-01-31T16:29:00.000-08:00

I set my alarm this morning, because I didn't want to sleep the day away and it ended up being my most productive Saturday in a long time!

I woke up at about 9:30, showered and hit the road with a destination in mind—Hong Kong Chinese in north Durham. I've been craving dim sum for a while and wasn't able to go when I was home because of the stupid snow. When I got to the restaurant, I was both disappointed and angry to find out they were closed. The rage only lasted a second though because I quickly realized that I was actually just a few minutes too early. That's a first! On the weekends, this place serves dim sum from 11 to 3, which is good to know. To kill some time, I headed across the street to a thrift store called Everything But Granny's Panties. I actually tried to find this place before Christmas to follow our family's rules and try to find some used gifts. Now I'm glad I couldn't find it. The place was a wreck. It's basically just a house with a bunch of crap inside. Nothing to see there...however, they did have a cool junkyard-style elephant in their parking lot!

In the store, I overheard a really funny conversation. A customer asked to use the bathroom and the woman working said, "Well, we used to let customers use the bathroom, but then somebody went and put a video of it onto the YouTube. I don't know why they felt the need to do that...we warned them it was messy!"

So, of course I searched for it. And of course I found it, with this written as the description: Okay, lemme explain. There is a second-hand store in Durham called Everything but Granny's Panties, and we had heard a lot of good things about it. When we finally went, we were a bit disappointed, but that's how these kinds of places are. Hit or miss. I really had to go to the bathroom while we were there, but they don't have a "public" restroom. They were, however, kind enough to let me use theirs, warning me first to not "break my leg." I thought they were kidding until I opened the door!! Note: Everyone around here actually calls the place "Granny's Panties." Enjoy!

A Mess in Granny's Panties from able parris on Vimeo.

After that, I headed back over to the restaurant and it was PACKED! I got back right at 11, which is good because if I had gotten back a few minutes later, I might not have gotten a table. Pretty crazy! I got seated and started off with some pork dumplings and pork buns. I love those pork buns...soooo good! Then I picked out something that I really didn't like (still not even sure what it is). I tried some shrimp dumplings (I like the pork ones better) and finished with a couple of those deliciously sweet sesame balls. With the exception of one dish, the food really hit the spot.

After breakfast, I headed to Auto Zone to grab some headlights for Cheryl's car. I've had a headlight out, so I just decided to switch out both at the same time. It was cheaper and easier than I expected, which was nice. But I was still able to get my hands all greasy and dirty, so I got that macho satisfaction that comes with doing manly things like fixing cars...even if it's just changing headlights.

The weirdest thing happened when I was driving home from Auto Zone. I passed a guy that had a duck sitting on his lap! I didn't believe it at first, so I let him catch up and...yep, it was a real, live duck just chillin' on the dude's lap. It'll probably be hard to see, but I took a picture anyway.

With the car taken care of, I headed off to the mall to get my computer looked at. (Sidetrack rant: some stupid lady was puppyguarding a parking spot in the parking lot. Totally against parking lot rules, if you ask me!) There's nothing seriously wrong, but I can't plug into the internet. I can still connect wirelessly, but it'd be nice to get my plug fixed so that I can use my laptop at work (since we don't have wireless there). As expected, the Genius Bar was booked out, so I just made an appointment for Monday. I didn't even walk around the mall because I had one more thing on my to-do list for the day...

The thing I was most excited for today was moving into my new cube at work. With a key and the alarm code now in my possession, I headed in to get settled in. I didn't even get the satisfaction of using my new key because there were other people in the office. I spent three hours cleaning out the old stuff in my cube and putting my personal touch on the place. It's not a finished product, but it feels good to get settled in a bit and I'm extremely excited for the new digs! Oh...did I mention I also found a VERY RARE card while cleaning out some old stuff? It's a Justin Upton Aflac card with the words "Player Issue" written on the side. It's really too bad that it's a little dinged up, otherwise it would be worth several hundred dollars. Here are a couple pictures of how my cube turned out so far...

What's your fantasy?

2009-01-31T16:19:00.000-08:00

If you're going to buy a fantasy magazine this year, why not make it one with my name in it? I don't see an additional dime either way, so please don't feel obligated, but if you want to buy it on Amazon, here's a link.

Restaurant reviews

2009-01-31T16:14:00.000-08:00

I've been to a couple pretty good restaurants lately that I wanted to tell everyone about.

LongHorn Steakhouse
First, when I got the good news about the job opportunity last week, I decided to go out and celebrate and headed toward this shopping center in Raleigh that a coworker showed me (another restaurant from this area will be mentioned below). I ended up at a place called the LongHorn Steakhouse. It's nothing spectacular - just your average steak chain (think Outback Steakhouse, but with a country-western theme, instead of the faux Australia vibe). However, it was pretty good, not too expensive and there were two things that really made it stand out. The best part was that when you order your steak, you have your choice of either a baked potato or a sweet potato. I chose a sweet potato and it was an EXCELLENT decision. They serve their sweet potatoes with butter and cinnamon sugar, and it was absolutely delicious! The second cool thing was that on my way out, the host thanked me by name. I couldn't figure out if he did it because he remembered my name from when I put it on the list to wait for a table, or if they somehow do it with credit card information, or what. Frankly, I'm not even sure if it's something they do every time, but it was pretty cool. I don't think that's ever happened to me before...

Jason's Deli
I'm usually one of the last people to leave work and oftentimes my buddy Kary will ask if I want to go to dinner. We both live alone and both know that eating alone sucks, so going out just makes sense sometimes. We have our staple places, but we've also been trying some new places and one place he showed me the other day has become a new favorite. It's a pretty big chain (though there aren't any in WA) called Jason's Deli. It's always packed with families with small kids (one of my editors told me it's his kids' favorite place to go) and I think I know why...free ice cream! They have lots of good soups, sandwiches and a salad bar. And, like I mentioned, free soft serve when you're done. They know the key to my heart!

Backyard BBQ Pit
Move over Q-Shack, I've got a new favorite barbecue restaurant! Don't get me wrong, the Q-Shack is good and all, but The Pit has a lot of things in its favor. 1) It's actual North Carolina-style barbecue, not Texas style like the Q-Shack. 2) It's a lot closer to work. 3) It's cheaper (almost half the price). 4) Aside from the hushpuppies, all the sides are better. 5) Their lemonade has chunks of pineapple in it! 6) The guys that work there are awesome. 7) You can bring in a Sharpie and draw on / autograph the walls.

Other restaurant-related stories
• I told my editor that I had already gone to Mama Dip's and he told me that in college, he would always take girls there on their first or second date. If they didn't like it, they didn't get another date with him! Haha!
• One place I really want to try the next time Cheryl comes out is Sutton's Drug Store. It's a really famous place in Chapel Hill that hearkens back to the '50s with great burgers, hot dogs, fries, milkshakes and orangeade or limeade.

I got the job!

2009-01-30T19:16:00.000-08:00

I think everyone who reads this site already knows, but I wanted to post on it anyway just in case. After six months of working hard as an editorial intern, I was offered a full-time position with Baseball America. I've absolutely loved my time out here, so the decision to accept was a no-brainer. Aside from the chance to write about baseball for the game's best publication and be immersed in the sport that I love 24/7, the work environment is just ideal. Everybody in the office is great, it's a fun place to be and I couldn't be more excited about this opportunity. It sounds cheesy, but I came out here to chase my dream job and now my dream has come true.

I'll be covering the draft, so I'll mostly be writing about high school and college players—mostly in the western states (minus California, which is its own beast). It will be a challenge, but it's certainly one that I'm looking forward to. Here's an example of the writeup we did for Washington last year.

Cheryl won't be able to join me until July, so I'll be living alone (still no roommate) until then. I will actually be able to come out to Seattle for a couple weeks between now and then, as my new bosses were extremely fair and flexible in understanding my unique situation. It will actually be perfect, as I'll be able to kill two birds with one stone and see some great players at UW and in the Seattle area during those visits.

I'll also have the opportunity to see a TON of baseball this year. I've already loaded schedules onto my calendar for UNC, Duke, NC State, ECU, the Durham Bulls, the Carolina Mudcats, the Greensboro Grasshoppers and the Burlington Royals. Plus, there's also some great high school players nearby this year and other tournaments and trips could be in the works. In April and May alone, there are only eight days where it's not actually possible to go to a game in the area. Think I can catch 100 games this year? I'll have fun trying!

Cheryl and I know it's going to be hard to be away from everyone and out here on our own. But we're going to visit as much as possible and are looking forward to this new chapter and our adventure together. Plus, I promised her a puppy. She's going to start a blog too (NorthCherylina.blogspot.com has a nice ring to it, doesn't it?).

I'll be sure to post more links to my writing and pictures of my cube once I get it all set up.

It's snowing!

2009-01-20T07:54:00.001-08:00

I thought I was done with this crap...

Weekend recap

2009-01-19T19:35:00.001-08:00

Cheryl was able to come out for a long weekend and we had a fantastic time together. She left work early on Friday and embarked on an eight-hour journey across the country. Her direct flight from Seattle to D.C. was delayed by 20 minutes, which forced her to sprint from gate-to-gate to make her connecting flight. Luckily, she made it just in the nick of time, narrowly avoiding a catastrophe!

Before picking Cheryl up at the airport, I went and saw Los Campesinos! and they were awesome. The opening band (Titus Andronicus) was good as well and I really liked the club (Cat's Cradle). Good times.

Cheryl got in at about 11 and we headed to the store to pick up some snacks for the weekend. Looking for some unhealthy munchies, Cheryl said, "This is our aisle!" as we passed one of the aisles in the middle of the store. She was talking about the snacks on the shelves, but I had to laugh because it was the cracker aisle and we were the only white people in the store!

After that, we headed home and stayed up late watching TV and playing cribbage.

We slept in on Saturday before heading out to get brunch at Elmo's. We had to wait a bit for a table, but it was worth it. Cheryl had scrambled eggs and chocolate chip pancakes and I tired the huevos rancheros. We followed that up with a trip to Locopops, which never disappoints, and then headed to the mall where we walked around for a bit and then saw the Notorious B.I.G movie. For dinner we got a Q-Shack sandwich to go and shared it at home while we chilled out again.

Sunday was even lazier. We slept in again and then headed out for lunch at Mama Dip's. Cheryl had the best chicken-fried steak she's ever had and I tried the roast beef. It wasn't as good as the chicken and dumplings I had last time there. Then...surprise, surprise... we hit up Locopops again and even got some to take home and stick in the freezer. That night, we ate dinner at California Pizza Kitchen and then went bowling. We bet on the games and I won both, as Cheryl declared it was her worst bowling performance since she was six years old. So, Cheryl paid up her end of the bet by doing my laundry and dishes and a care package is on the way.

Today, we woke up and just hung out for a bit before she had to go to the airport. The recap probably doesn't do it justice, but we had a really great time together. Right now, we're not certain when we'll see each other again, but we should hopefully have some news later this week!

Tweet tweet!

2009-01-18T21:05:00.000-08:00

You've probably noticed the new sidebar on the right side of this page, but I'm guessing not all of my readers really know what Twitter actually is. Twitter is another social networking site, but don't think it's another MySpace or Facebook. It's similar in that you have "friends," but it's different too. All you do on your page is what's known as micro-blogging — mini blog posts limited to 140 characters. You're encouraged to update often, so that your friends can keep track of what you're doing. Just like MySpace and Facebook, it's a lot more fun than it actually sounds. Give it a shot...sign up now and let's be friends!

Back in the day

2009-01-10T13:10:00.000-08:00

I'm sure neither of these will be as entertaining to you as they are to me, but I'm putting them up anyway. Recently, my buddy Mike found a CD that contained both a movie we made in high school and a recording of our band's first concert. Enjoy!

"Killer Ape"

And here's the MP3 of our first show. It's sloppy, trashy and so, so good! This took place on Feb. 12, 2000 at a little place called the Happy Valley Grange off of Redmond-Fall City Road. At the time, our band was called Dead Last (we would later have to change it to Joe Batters after getting a threatening letter from some other band called Dead Last). We rented out the Grange and played with our friends' band, Good For Nothing. We promoted the show around school and played a song in an assembly the day before. Hundreds of kids came out and each paid $5 to get in and a great time was had by all. The funny thing is that our singer split right after the show, not helping us clean up or anything, so we didn't give him any of the money we made. I think he got the last laugh on that one!

Mad Max

2009-01-06T22:09:00.001-08:00

After Christmas #3, the kids were having fun jumping on bubble wrap in the kitchen. I tried to get some video footage of it, but my nephew Max saw the camera and came out of nowhere. He's a bit of a ham...and SO CUTE!

Christmas catch-up

2009-01-06T22:01:00.001-08:00

I didn't blog much when I was home for Christmas, so I wanted to do a little recap of the awesome two weeks I got to spend in Seattle...

I got in on the night of the 19th, right after the first few snowstorms happened. I have two funny stories from my plane ride home. One, I sat in front of a woman that was baby talking her lap dog the entire flight. Suuuper annoying! "Oh Clancy, it's okay schmoopie! We're almost there sweetheart! Clancy!" Two, the guy sitting next to me was counting on his fingers while he took a Mensa quiz in the American Airlines magazine. I snuck a picture of him and if you look closely, he's actually on the page of the quiz...

The weather was pretty crazy already, but my dad was able to pick me up and took Cheryl and I to her mom's house. The next night my family went out to dinner at The Met and it was awesome...the wedge salad is to die for, but my eyes were bigger than my stomach and I couldn't finish my steak.

It was snowing during dinner and didn't really let up for the next couple days. My dad was still able to get around in his Volvo, so it was kind of funny to constantly rely on him for rides. Living at Liz and Jean's house and relying on our parents for rides really made us feel like we were back in junior high.

Christmas came quickly and it they were great. I say they because with Cheryl's family, I essentially get four Christmases every year. So far, we have spent Christmas morning with my family opening gifts and eating breakfast and the afternoon is spent over at her mom's house with another round of presents and an early dinner. A couple days later, when Cheryl's brothers get into town, there's another Christmas at her mom's and then one at her dad's. Good times.

My family had a rule that every gift was supposed to be either used, homemade or under $20, but my sister was the only one that actually followed it for everyone. I made a really cool baseball scorebook for my dad, but it was too difficult to make or find used things for my mom and sister, so Cheryl and I cheated.

I got some really great gifts this year. Some of the highlights included a bike from my sister, a baseball bat pepper grinder, a vintage scarf and a really neat old baseball magazine from an antique store from my parents, some cologne from Cheryl, a new golf bag from Cheryl's dad, Entourage Season 3 from my cousin Erin and a lot of iTunes gift cards ($110, to be exact), which I had no problem spending!

The two weeks absolutely flew by and because of the snow and other commitments, I wasn't able to do everything I had in mind. I didn't see people I wanted to see, didn't go places I wanted to go, eat at places I wanted to eat or do things I wanted to do. However, it was still great to be able to come home for such a long time and be with Cheryl and the rest of my family for a bit. So, aside from big things like that, here are some of my more random highlights, in no particular order...

• The first time I saw my niece, Ali, she ran into the house, gave me a big hug and said, "I love you, Con Con!"
• Listening to my nephew Max sing songs, call his dad "Greg" and just be an all-around adorable two-year-old (video proof coming soon)
• Riding bikes in the snow with my dad on Christmas day
• Mike and Jenn got engaged!
• throwing snowballs
• Cheryl and I giggling ourselves to sleep
• awesome home-cooked meals
• "THAT IS FOR YOUR OWN HOME!"
• Watching National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation and Home Alone with Cheryl and Meg
• Going to the last Thunderbirds hockey game at the Key Arena with my dad
• Playing a prank on my niece Madi by constantly hiding a picture of her sister Olivia around the house
• Watching my niece, Gabi, imitate Dan's awful Russian march from The Amazing Race
• Watching "Step Brothers" and playing Rock Band with my homies

BOB VEO

2008-12-29T20:29:00.000-08:00

I got to drive MY car for the first time in months today and it was awesome! That's all for now...

Last night's dinner

2008-12-17T07:41:00.000-08:00

I had a bit of false confidence in my cooking abilities after making some bomb-ass pumpkin bread for BA's holiday potluck. Then, something as easy as pancakes cut me right back down to size...

Hello....NEWMAN!

2008-12-15T19:47:00.000-08:00

My friend's cat, Newman, is in a "cutest holiday cat" contest on the Seattle PI's site. Go to this page and vote for the cat pictured below!

I don't mean to brag, I don't mean to boast...

2008-12-10T15:26:00.001-08:00

It's December 10th at 6:26 p.m. and the current temperature outside is 68°. Just thought I'd share...

The best idea I've ever had

2008-12-07T19:47:00.000-08:00

I was eating Cap'n Crunch for dinner tonight when I had an epiphany. Why in the world don't they make Peanut Butter Cap'n Crunch WITH CRUNCH BERRIES?!? I quickly called Cheryl to tell her idea. She has a history of inventing awesome foods—the next time you're eating chocolate cookies with vanilla frosting or vanilla cookies with chocolate frosting, keep in mind that Nabisco stole that idea from an adorable eight-year old with pigtails and dimples. They taste a little bitter after that. Cheryl prodded me to make this dream come true, so I went to the store and bought a box of each cereal.

When I got home, I dumped all the Cap'n Crunch with Crunch Berries into a big bowl and began to sort out the Crunch Berries from the golden, mouth-shredding pillows.

Then, I poured the Peanut Butter Cap'n Crunch and the Crunch Berries into the empty Cap'n Crunch box, mixing them with my pouring.

So, $4 and 20 minutes later...VOILA!...peanut butter & jelly cereal, bitches! Honestly, it was better than I could have even imagined. This needs to be mass produced ASAP! Now, if I could only get Safeway to bring back their red licorice soda...

Bull Durham & soul food

2008-12-07T19:24:00.001-08:00

First, I forgot to mention in yesterday's post that while I was driving around Durham, I came across the old baseball stadium where the Bulls used to play and where Bull Durham was filmed. Not much to look at now, as it's under construction. It's going to be used as an amateur baseball training complex and as the home field for the North Carolina Central University Eagles. That didn't stop me from taking a picture though...

Next, a buddy and I went to Mama Dip's for lunch today to cross off one of the restaurants on my list. He's new to the area as well, but has already been there multiple times. There was a 15 minute wait to get a table, but it was well worth it—the food was phenomenal! We started off with some sweet potato biscuits and then I ordered the chicken & dumplings, with sides of collard greens and yams. Of course I washed it all down with some sweet tea. I'll definitely be heading back there again before my time here is up.

I cleaned my kitchen for nothing...

2008-12-06T21:17:00.000-08:00

In an interesting turn of events, it looks like I might not be getting a new roommate after all. We'll see...

It was a fun day today. I did wake up at 7:30 to be awake when the potential new roommate got here to sign his lease and get his key (which didn't happen. He showed up, but didn't have money for first month's rent, which is obviously a problem). After that I went toodling around Durham. There was a particular store that I wanted to check out to possibly do a little Christmas shopping, but upon arriving, I learned that they don't open until 11. Slackers. So I headed back home to pick up shoes I had to return at Nordstrom. Remember those black and neon green Asics I got in October? Turned out they are, by far, the most uncomfortable shoes I've ever worn. They actually rubbed the skin off of my Achilles' tendon. On top of that, they're too narrow, so my jeans were constantly slipping underneath them as I walked and they were incredibly heavy little shoes. Good riddance! I was bummed, however, when I showed up at Nordstrom and the guy that took care of me last time was there again this time. He was a big douche and basically called me a liar when I told them I only wore them twice, but whatev...I walked out with new shoes that should be a lot better. I've been looking for new brown shoes for a long time and found these Clarks that I like a lot. While I still would like to get a dressier pair of brown shoes, these are nice in that they look good with jeans and can probably still be pulled off with a pair of slacks. They're light, comfortable and I would call them Seattle-style casual office shoes. See for yourself...

After that, I was driving around, killing time before 11. I saw some signs for a "multi-family indoor yard sale" that I decided to follow. They led me to a random warehouse and it turned out to be some sort of fundraiser for a local Christian Academy. I walked in and there were six little tables that were absolutely dwarfed in this gigantic warehouse. The first table was manned by a mid-20s thuggish guy that had a bunch of clothes, two DVDs and a paintball gun on display. As I approached his table, he said, "Hey, ever seen one of these?" as he pulled out this strange, cylindrical handheld contraption from his pocket. Before I could say no, he was unfolding blades and it was a four-bladed knife that's only purpose would be for a little no-nonsense stabbing. Playing dumb, I asked, "What is that for?" to which he replied, "It's for protection! I just carry it around to make sure nobody messes with me!" Needless to say, I passed on the protection device and also passed on stiletto flip flops, Jesus hats and cheetah-print, furry candle holders.

While searching for a picture of that, I came across this — which is just insane.

I finally headed back over to the store that opened at 11, but couldn't find what I was looking for. After that, I met up with a buddy from work to play some disc golf. I really suck at throwing frisbees and it was nearly as frustrating as real golf. But we had a great time and agreed to play again sometime. After that we had some Thai food at a place called Twisted Noodles and it was excellent. After that, I came home, took a nap and I've just been chillin' tonight. Good times!

This 'n That

2008-12-05T23:42:00.000-08:00

Work Update
Work has been really awesome lately. I've been super busy the last two days, calling every MLB front office to pass along information about Baseball America's ninth-annual Awards Gala that will take place during the Winter Meetings next week. On top of that, I've been doing a lot of research for a college insert that will be in the next issue and I have two articles in the double issue coming out soon with Nick Adenhart on the cover. Here's a link to one of them about baseball trying to get back into the 2016 Olympics. I got to talk to Curtis Granderson for that one, which was sweet. I also played a great prank at work today that was talked about all day and I made plans to go disc golfing with a co-worker on Saturday and plans to hit up Mama Dip's with another co-worker on Sunday, so the weekend should be good too!

Goodbye
Goodbye walking around naked.
Goodbye leaving clothes in the dryer.
Goodbye neglecting the dishes until I'm eating cereal out of Tupperware.
Goodbye blasting music at 3 in the morning.
Goodbye crapping with the door open.
Goodbye always choosing what to watch on TV and having the best seat.
I'm getting a new roommate in five hours.

Clark Griswold would be ashamed...
My street is pretty festive. Of the 25 or so houses on my street, I would say that 10-12 have Christmas lights up and they look nice. There's one house, however, that really should have spent a little more time with their Christmas lights. This photo doesn't really do it justice, but I think an apt analogy would be, Conor : wrapping Christmas presents :: these people : putting up Christmas lights. See for yourself...

Los Campesinos!
The other day I was watching TV and saw an ad for eMusic that offered 35 free, no-strings-attached downloads. So, I checked it out and, on a whim, took a chance on a band called Los Campesinos! Despite the Spanish name (which apparently translates into The Farmers or The Peasants), they're a seven-piece indie-pop band from Wales. The album is pure gold and I'm in love with it. I just got it late Wednesday night and I've already listened to it about seven times. I found out they'll be playing here in January and I'm pumped. Here's a YouTube clip (just audio), if you want to hear for yourself. Enjoy!

Shelby & Twitch

2008-12-04T19:42:00.001-08:00

I'm taking care of a co-worker's pets for the weekend. He and his girlfriend have a rabbit named Twitch and a little box turtle named Shelby. Twitch is easy. All I have to do is shake the poop of of his/her towel, fill up the food dish, put in a handful of hay and feed it a yogurt treat. It's really cute and really soft, but also really fast and Ali told me, "Don't let it out because you'll have a really hard time trying to catch it." While I know that would make for a great blog entry, I'm not risking it...

Shelby, on the other hand, is a little more difficult. I have to make sure its dirt is all even and then spray water all throughout the tank to maintain a damp atmosphere. Also, I think it's a baby turtle because it's really small and I have to...get this...hand feed it earthworms. Not even full earth worms, either. I have to chop an earthworm into thirds and hold the little pieces in front of Shelby's face until it feels like eating. You better like this picture because I think I got worm blood on my phone...

I like food

2008-12-03T19:08:00.000-08:00

Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving was great. As I mentioned before, I headed out to Winston-Salem to spend the day with my buddy Dave and his wife's family. It was so nice of them to have me out and they welcomed me in like an old family friend. Dave said I couldn't bring any food, so I brought some flowers instead. The funny thing is that if we ate the flowers, they'd probably taste better than any food I could have made. I made great time on the way out there, arriving a little after 2. We just hung out for a bit, talking and watching some football before dinner was ready a little after three. All in all, there were 10 of us at the table—Dave and his wife Amy, her parents, her sister, her brother, his wife, two kids and me. The food was great. Pretty traditional Thanksgiving fare—turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, orange rolls, green bean casserole, cranberries, pistachio Jell-O salad and homemade apple sauce. However, there were two more southern things that were served: corn pudding and sweet potato casserole. Everything was delicious! For dessert, I had some pumpkin chocolate chip cake with ice cream and then we played some games. It was a great time.

Restaurant checklist
Last night I started flipping through the guide to Durham Cheryl and I picked up when we first got here. I hadn't really looked at it since that first week, but I decided I would try and find a few new restaurants to check out before I leave. Mostly, I found more barbecue places I want to try to see how they match up against The Q Shack & Arthur Bryant's. Here's my checklist...

• Bullock's
• Dillard's
• Hog Heaven
• The Barbecue Joint

Although I may be adding more to that list now that I found this Web site!

The Barbecue Joint wasn't in the book, because it's actually in Chapel Hill. I found out about that place on Google, because apparently Rachel Ray went there when she came to the Triangle for an episode of $40 A Day. Another place she went to was a traditional southern restaurant called Mama Dip's. I'm very excited about going there and I have a feeling that some chicken and dumplings might be in store for me this weekend. I might even try some chitlins too, we'll see...

Man Vs. Food
This is a new show on the Travel Channel that I found tonight and became an immediate fan. The host, Adam Richman, is funny without being annoying as he visits cities to pig out at their best greasy spoons. He visits a few different restaurants and ends the show by taking on an eating challenge. In Texas, for example, he ate a 72 oz. steak in a half hour and in Memphis he tried to eat an eight-pound burger. I wish I could get paid to eat!

Let's wrap this up with some awesome live footage of one of my favorite bands, The Descendents, and their song, "I Like Food." Enjoy!

Another awesome Web site

2008-11-26T20:28:00.000-08:00

Here's another great Web site, but instead of being a great reference site (like the one I listed below), this one is a game. The site is called Sporcle and it's filled with all kinds of quizzes. For example, I found out about it through a baseball blog that linked to a quiz where you try to name all 53 players that have ever had 30/30 seasons in MLB history (30 home runs and 30 stolen bases). Give it a whirl...

Good Web site

2008-11-26T14:00:00.000-08:00

For my readers that are fans of board games (and I know many of you are), I stumbled upon a cool Web site today that I thought I would pass along: BoardGameGeek. Enjoy!

Cheryl's conjugal visit

2008-11-25T19:17:00.000-08:00

This weekend was awesome because Cheryl got to visit. We had to sweat it out though—it almost didn't happen. One of the parents in Cheryl's class offered her a standby ticket and, being that it was the weekend before Thanksgiving, open seats on flights were hard to come by. She got shut out on Thursday night and then three times Friday morning before catching a mid-day flight that allowed her to get here just before midnight. Neither of us cared because we were both just so excited that she was able to make it out at all.

On Saturday morning we had grand plans to head to Raleigh for a Christmas parade featuring Josh Hamilton, but we woke up too late. So we just chilled out for a little bit and then went for an early lunch at the Q Shack. Cheryl liked it a lot more this time around, since she listened to my suggestion on the beef brisket and the hush puppies didn't taste like onion rings. I love that place.

After lunch, we drove around Durham. I gave her the Duke tour that I hadn't yet discovered when she was out here the first time and then we hit up Locopos for some dessert. J.P, the guy that always works on the weekends, cracked up when I walked in because I'm always brining new people there. Cheryl got cookies n' cream and I tried chocolate pumpkin.

After that, we headed back home to chill out for a bit. Someone was supposed to come see the house (a potential roommate), but they never showed. At about 5, we headed to the mall for dinner and a movie. We walked around the mall for a bit and then headed across the street to P.F. Chang's for dinner. Buuuuut it was like a two-hour wait, so we made reservations for Sunday night instead and headed back to the mall...where we waited (only) and hour and a half to eat at the Cheesecake Factory.

We killed some time by walking hanging out in Barnes and Noble, where we looked at books, magazine and had some holiday-themed drinks from Starbucks. Cheryl had peppermint hot chocolate and I had an egg nog latte. Two funny things happened while we were waiting to eat. One, we saw an interesting old guy. He was decked out in UNC gear, which isn't weird in and of itself, but he had pajama pants pulled up under his moobs and he was wearing Tarheel slippers and, oh yeah, did I mention he also had earrings, two purses and maybe lipstick? The picture doesn't do it justice, but take a look for yourself...

I thought about putting his picture on a Duke message board, but that's just too mean.

Cheryl and I also were flipping through one of those books that lists 1000 things to do before you die. I just opened it to a random page and was taken back. One of the things to do before you die is apparently...

*69 someone

...which led to this conversation:
Me: Cher, check this out!
Cheryl: Oh my gosh, that's crazy! What does the star mean?
Me: OOOOH! Hahahaha! STAR 69 someone!
Cheryl: Oh my gosh, that is so funny!

Now, you can say that dirty minds think alike, but in our defense, that's a pretty crappy thing to make the book. This wasn't some dusty book we found on the shelf, this was a book out on one of their display tables, giving me the impression that it's a newer book. Who uses star 69 anymore? What else should I make sure I do before I die? Send a telegram?

After we got bored at Barnes and Noble, we headed back over to the Cheesecake Factory and by the time we were finally seated, we were both starving. Thankfully, the food was quick, tasted great and Cheryl said she hadn't been there in like three years. Then we saw Role Models. This weekend was pretty similar to the one I had the weekend before with Megan. The movie was just as good the second time and Cheryl loved it too.

After the movie, we hit up the grocery store so that we could make root beer floats. Then we went home, enjoyed those and watched SNL.

On Sunday, we woke up and headed over to Chapel Hill where we walked around Franklin Street for lunch and...you guessed it...more Locopops! I got chocolate brownie and Cheryl got peanut butter chocolate chip. If you can't tell, I freaking love Locopops. I think I actually told Cheryl while we were at the Chapel Hill Locopops that it's my favorite place in the world.

I love it so much, in fact, that we went to the Durham location before dinner. Appetizers I guess. We had to go early because they close at 6 in the winter now, remember? And this was hilarious. We showed up at about 5:30 and as we walked up, we could see through the window that J.P. (the guy that works there) was sound asleep. We walked in quietly and were giggling watching him sleep. A woman and a kid walked in just after us and they told us to wake him up. So I started by quietly saying his name...which turned into almost yelling his name. That wasn't working. I wasn't worried because I could see him breathing, but I knew that just speaking loudly wasn't doing the trick, so I stepped behind the counter and walked over to him. I had to shake his knee for like 20 seconds before he woke up. Heavy sleeper! Even though we assured him that it wasn't a big deal, he was really embarrassed and gave us free popsicles.

Cheryl and I then went to our dinner at P.F. Chang's and it was the bomb...really hit the spot. Unfortunately, we somehow forgot to take our leftovers with us when we headed home to watch some movies. Cheryl brought our latest Netflix movies out with her and we watched an awesome Zach Galifianakis standup DVD and the movie Charlie Bartlett before hitting the sack.

It was a great weekend, filled with laughter and love. I'm so glad Cheryl was able to make it out here. She's absolutely my favorite person in the world and I can't wait to see her again in 23 days!

Great News

2008-11-24T18:21:00.000-08:00

I'm too tired to do a weekend recap, but I wanted to pass along some awesome news from the weekend. On Saturday, I got an e-mail from my buddy out here in North Carolina inviting me over for Thanksgiving dinner with his wife's family on Thursday. It was such a nice surprise and made me feel great because the alternative was to just pretend the holiday wasn't even happening to dodge the disappointment. So, that should be fun. I'm not bringing any food because, let's get serious, I've become a better cook out here, but I'm not that good! I am bringing flowers though...

Meg's Visit

2008-11-18T19:06:00.000-08:00

My sister was able to come out and visit this weekend and it was awesome. She arrived Friday at about 5, so I took off from work a little bit early to go pick her up. Having skipped lunch that day, I was starving, so we headed straight to dinner. I really wanted to take her to my favorite little Mexican place here in town. Remember, it's the place that shares a location with the Jamaican restaurant that I found on accident? We got there and I was really bummed out to find that the Mexican part of the place had gone out of business. We tried the Jamaican and it was pretty good (awesome pineapple soda!), but it's too bad about that Mexican place...

After that we headed over to Locopops for some dessert, where more disappointment ensued. Don't worry...Locopops is still in business (with a lot of help from me), but they changed to their winter hours and close at 6 now. Boo! With that plan squashed, we headed over to the mall to get some ice cream and see a movie. We got there at about 7:30, which meant we had to decide between rushing into the 7:25 showing of Role Models, or waiting until 10. We decided to wait because that would allow us to get some ice cream, wander around the mall and not get stuck with horrible seats. The movie was hilarious—so good that I told Cheryl that I would see it again with her. We got home and kept the movies rolling by popping in Mallrats.

We slept in on Saturday, hit up Starbucks and then grabbed lunch at my favorite restaurant, The Q Shack. Megan loved it! After that we drove around Duke's campus while the food settled, before grabbing some dessert at Locopops. They must only have one employee on the weekends, because it was the same kid there that was there all three times Kelly, Matt and I visited. He laughed when I walked in and said, "You're always bringing in different people!" I had chocolate horchata and Megan chose the mighty mojito. Mmm! We then zipped over to Chapel Hill for a little campus comparison. We parked the car and walked around Franklin Street, which is nice. We found another Locopops and couldn't resist stopping. I had trail mix (banana, coconut and nuts) and Megan tried pomegranate tangerine. I saw a cool sign on the window of a pizza place, but we didn't eat there...

After that we came home and took a little nap before heading to a party at one of my coworker's place. He just bought a condo with his girlfriend and his birthday was the next day, so there were many reasons to celebrate. We only stayed about an hour and a half, but it was a lot of fun. Because we forgot to find a UNC store for Megan to find a sweatshirt that afternoon, we headed over to the mall again to get her a Tarheels hoodie. After that we grabbed some food in the food court and then headed home to watch Saturday Night Live, which was pretty good but we turned it off after Weekend Update to watch a movie we picked up that day, John Tucker Must Die. I told Megan to buy it because I remember it being really funny. I think I owe her $5...

We slept in again on Sunday and then headed to brunch at Elmo's. It was really busy and we had to wait about 20 minutes before ending up at the counter next to a semi-crazy woman and a couple that reminded us of Screech and Lisa Turtle. We both had the apple-stuffed cinnamon french toast, which was pretty good, but a little too soggy. Since Elmo's is so close to Locopops, we had to have a little post-brunch dessert, so we headed over there and continued choosing the same food, with my recommendation of Mexican chocolate. Delicious! After that we got a little silly and decided to go to Chucky Cheese's! Good times! As we pulled up, my heart sank.

That's right, Boston Market has closed. Cheryl said she'll still come visit though. Meg and I had a great time playing some skee-ball and video games before heading back home to chill. We took another nap and then headed out to a place called Tomato Jake's for some pizza. Kind of a weird place. It's in a strip mall near Target and the decor is funky neon, like an old Trapper Keeper, but the menu has a mafia theme. It doesn't really mesh, but the food was pretty good.

After that we came home and...watched more movies! I guess it was the weekend of popsicles, movies and out-of-business restaurants! We watched some classics: Superbad and Forgetting Sarah Marshall before heading to bed. In between the movies, Meg gave me a haircut and ended up with some furry socks...

It was another awesome weekend!

A Warning For Gregy

2008-11-15T23:46:00.000-08:00

Attention Gregy: consider yourself warned. Enough said.

2 Funny Photos & 2 Funny Stories

2008-11-12T17:33:00.000-08:00

The other day I was eating some Cheetos and one fell on the floor. I picked it up and set it on a piece of paper that was on my coffee table. The next day, I came home from work, sat down and went "Eeeewwww!" Check out what happened to the piece of paper...

That's not a shadow, that's grease. I didn't need to see that.

Next up is a picture of the fridge at work. We may not always agree on baseball prospects, but we all agree that there is no need for a legitimate lunch bag when you have old grocery bags lying around your house...

Now, two quick funny stories (hopefully these aren't had-to-be-there stories)

1) A work buddy asked me today if I wanted to go to Starbucks after lunch, which was a no-brainer. He happens to be writing the Mariners chapter for the Prospect Handbook, so we started talking Mariners baseball on the way to his car. When we got in, he was listening to a Pearl Jam bootleg from 1994. So, here we are, talking about the Mariners, listening to Pearl Jam and driving to Starbucks. Too funny!

2) After work I headed to the grocery store to pick up a few necessities. One thing I needed was deodorant. Instead of going with my usual Old Spice (Fresh or Swagger), I decided to see what else was out there. It's not that I don't like Old Spice anymore, it's just that I was in the mood for something different. So, here I am, sniffing different deodorants when a grocery store employee turns the corner and says, "You know, you wouldn't want to buy those if everyone did that." I laughed before realizing she wasn't kidding. "What, am I not supposed to sniff them?" I asked. "Well, no, but whatever...you're already doing it. I'm just saying that you wouldn't want to buy those if everyone did that." She replied. "Yeah I would because I already know that everyone already does this." I said as she walked away. I laughed to myself because I felt like Larry David. Unfortunately I wasn't able to get into a good stare down...

As a house update, a guy came by tonight to check out the open room and he seemed really nice. I'll obviously keep you posted...

Total Bummer

2008-11-11T23:31:00.000-08:00

This morning I drove through Starbucks to get my morning coffee. After the employee handed me my drink he kind of looked at me funny and said, "You remind me of someone!" This is always kind of an exciting thing to hear, because you always expect the best. "Who is it?" he thought. "Um....um....OH YEAH! FRED DURST!" My heart sank.

Quick back story for those that weren't there/haven't heard about it: When a bunch of us went to go see Nikki Glaser and Doug Benson a while back, we were the first ones there and ended up sitting right in front. I had my hat on backward and was enjoying Doug's awesome set when all of a sudden he called me out. "Glad to see Fred Durst is in the audience tonight," he joked. I then made the mistake of looking behind me. He thought that was funny and kept referencing my presence the entire night. It sucked.

"Ah man!" I groaned.
"What, isn't that him?" the guy asked.
"You mean the guy from Limp Bizkit?"
"Yeah!"
"That sucks dude, that guy's a tool!"

He just laughed and I drove away. I'm sure he didn't mean it as an insult and he obviously didn't know my history of being likened to Fred Durst, but it was a crappy way to start the day. Not that I really care—at least it makes for a funny story. But, here's a tip for everyone out there: Don't tell people they look like assbag celebrities. Telling a woman they look like Heidi Klum? That's fine. Telling them they look like Janet Reno...not so much.

Redmond Reunion

2008-11-09T13:55:00.000-08:00

Friday after work I grabbed some clothes, made a couple PB&Js, burned a CD with some Adam Carolla clips and headed off to Winston-Salem where I was going to spend the weekend with some dear family friends, the Harbaughs. As a bonus, another family friend would be there as well—Phil Brown!

I got in at about 9:30 Friday night. We just chit-chatted for a while and then I headed upstairs and went to bed. The next morning, We hit the town. First, Larry gave us a tour of his building at R.J. Reynolds. The first thing I noticed when we walked in was that is smelled like a smoking hotel room. Turns out, employees are still allowed to smoke while they work. It made me joke about people at Budweiser running around drunk all day. Aside from the smell, the building was actually really cool. It was actually used as an architectural model for the Empire State Building and had some beautiful marble, woodwork and art on display.

After that we headed over to Old Salem, then went and ate lunch at a place near Wake Forest's campus called the Village Tavern. It was a good spot and it was really crowded because Wake Forest was playing Virginia in their homecoming game that afternoon. After lunch we headed back home where we chilled out, watched some football, played some cribbage and then ate a great, home-cooked meal. My chicken fajita burrito the other night might have been the best thing I've ever prepared for myself, but it pales in comparison to a real cook. Marcia, Larry and Phil all called it a night pretty early and I went up and watched some TV. I was bummed that SNL was a rerun, so instead started channel surfing. TLC's show "17 Kids and Counting" has to be the most stressful program on television. The episode I saw had family friends visiting the family, and they had 16 kids of their own. That's insane and just watching it had me nearly hyperventilating.

This morning, I woke up and Marcia and Larry took me out for breakfast at a 50's-style joint called Billy Bob's Silver Diner and then I hit the road and headed back home. It was a great weekend. I am still feeling sick, so I stopped at Target to get some medicine and yogurt. I actually found a Target that's a lot closer to my house than the one I had been going to and I saw a guy from work there, which marks the first time I've seen someone I know while out and about, so that was kind of cool.

Before I headed home though, I wanted to go take a picture of this business I noticed the other day. To preface this, you must know that the cities of Durham, Raleigh and Chapel Hill form an area called Research Triangle...often simply referred to as The Triangle. I know that a lot of businesses like to put their location in the name of the business, but I think this one is giving off the wrong impression...

Let's keep this streak alive...

2008-11-06T22:49:00.000-08:00

With my success in getting Fernando to start a blog, I figured I'd try my luck again. That being said...

C'mon, Jen — get with the program! Scrapbooks are so 2003; 2009 is all about blogging! If Jon can start a Facebook page, you should definitely follow in the footsteps of the Pioneer Woman and start a blog already. I even took the first step for you — I checked and (thankfully) flickstickandlick.blogspot.com is still available!

You always have hilarious stories and plus...these girls are too cute to not be blogged about...

Keep Track o' Flaco!

2008-11-06T15:50:00.000-08:00

Thanks to my suggestion, Fernando has started his own blog! Boo yeah! It's nice to see all five members of the old crew blogging from their respective parts of the globe. Keep up with Fernando's thoughts at keeptrackoflaco.blogspot.com. Hopefully he'll post lots of pictures and stories from Guyana, bust out some silly fiction and puts together a list of his top 25 favorite albums of all time!

Cooking Update

2008-11-05T16:39:00.000-08:00

Despite being somewhat under the weather, I came home from work today motivated. I did the dishes, but then something weird happened. Instead of having cereals or leftovers for dinner, I decided to go all out and try to cook make a chicken fajita burrito. With an assist from my mom, who assured me it was okay to grill vegetables and chicken in the same pan, I began my quest.

I chopped up the vegetables (green bell peppers and an onion) and defrosted the chicken breasts. After that, I cut the chicken breasts in to strips. Is there anything more disgusting than raw chicken? I grilled the chicken and when it was all cooked, I added some water, the vegetables (including some corn) and the fajita powder. After the veggies cooked, I added the mix to a warm tortilla with some shredded cheese and sour cream and I have to say it's probably the best thing I've ever made for myself. Granted, it doesn't have a lot of competition...maybe a good steak? S'mores?

And, get this, after dinner I even cleaned up my mess and put my leftovers in the 'fridge. My husband rating is going way up!

Yet Another Awesome-Weekend Recap, Part 2

2008-11-04T17:27:00.000-08:00

Cheryl and I woke up early on Saturday morning because I wanted to get down to Renton and vote before spending the day with my family. We drove down there and got into the parking lot at 8:45, but it was already packed. Apparently there was a mob of people waiting outside at 8 a.m., so they opened early and I headed to the back of an already-long line. Most people were just getting their absentee ballots, but there was also an option to vote early using the touch-screen electronic machines and that's what I chose to do. Why King County only had seven of them available is beyond me and I ended up waiting about an hour and a half before being able to cast my vote, but it was worth the wait.

After that, we headed back up to Redmond to hang with my fam for the day. Initially we had plans to go to the Pacific Science Center, but everyone was a little luke warm on that and we instead decided to head over to U-Village for a little shopping. I liked that idea better. Check out the hoodie I found at Fireworks, of all places...

Too perfect! Cheryl and I got a little early Christmas shopping done and then we all headed over to The Ave for some lunch. As I used to work on The Ave, I was excited to visit one of my favorite restaurants, a little Vietnamese place called Thanh Vi. I ate there very frequently when I worked at The Dawg Den because the food is great, it's cheap and the people there are as nice as they come. They would always greet me by name and, despite not visiting them for several years, when I walked in, they were like, "Oooh! It's been so long!" They freaking remembered me!!! Not only that, but they asked Cheryl if she was still teaching—and that's just based on the fact that I talked about her and she had been in one other time. Amazing! The food was even better than I remembered and it was so cool that they remembered me. I certainly won't let two years pass until my next visit!

We headed home after lunch and chilled out for a bit before Horia's big Halloween party. At about 6:30, Cheryl, Meg and I began getting ready. Cheryl and I were a cute gnome couple and Meg was a gypsy.

We went to the party and it was a blast! It was great to see everybody and there were some awesome costumes. Horia made an awesome Ninja Turtles costume so, fittingly, Caroline decided to dress up as April O'Neil. I didn't get a picture of Brent, who went all-out with his Ghostbusters costume, but Sonia dressed up as Amy Winehouse and, in my opinion, had the best costume of the whole party. The funny thing is that she said she had everything necessary in her closet!

Things got a pretty crazy right as we were leaving. As we left, our car was stopped at the entrance to Horia's apartment complex by Redmond Police Officers...armed with machine guns. Turns out they were looking for "a man with a gun." Well, it was someone at Horia's party. One of his friends was dressed in all camouflage with a machine gun of his own. A neighbor saw him, got worried and called the police. It could have been really scary, but it turns out that everything ended well. No one got in trouble or got hurt, so that was a relief.

After an awesome breakfast Sunday morning, I flew back to North Carolina. On the first leg of the flight, I was a little worried when the woman sitting next to me moved her barf bag to the front of the pocket and said, "I hope I don't get sick!" She then proceeded to take some dramamine, eat a Snickers bar and talk my ear off. I had a layover in Detroit and the next leg was shorter and quieter.

Yet Another Awesome-Weekend Recap, Part 1

2008-11-03T20:17:00.000-08:00

I'd been looking forward to last weekend for months. Cheryl and I were able to find an affordable plane ticket, so I got to go home for the weekend. It was perfect because I got to spend Halloween at home and it split the time between when I got to see Cheryl in DC and when I'll get to head home for Christmas.

I took off work a bit early on Thursday and a buddy drove me to the airport. RDU is nice because it's a small airport. My flight left at 6 and I got to the airport at 5:15 and still had time to spare. Nice! My flight had a layover in Minneapolis and, although I don't hate flying as much as Cheryl does, it's still kind of annoying. It's just so cramped and I always come away with a cold, or so it seems. The first leg of the flight wasn't that great. There was a baby crying behind me the entire flight and I was on the aisle. A lot of people like the aisle, but I would rank my preference as window-middle-aisle. I'm not a fan of the aisle because you get bumped about 15 times an hour. I got to Minneapolis, chilled out for an hour and then it was on to Seattle. I got into SeaTac at about 11. Cheryl picked me up and it was so great to see her. She looked absolutely beautiful and we couldn't keep our hands or eyes off of each other the whole way home. We stopped by my house to say hi to the fam before heading over her house to call it a night.

She woke up early the next morning to go to work and I had a busy day planned as well. The twins slept over that night so that I could see them in the morning. They came in and woke me up at 9:30 and it was so great to see them—they're so stinkin' cute! I was able to play with them for about a half hour while they ate breakfast and then Liz and I took them to preschool. They were a little confused when they found out I was coming home because when I left, I told them I wouldn't see them again until they're five years old. They remembered that and when they found out I was coming home, they would ask, "Mom, am I five now?" Too cute! The funniest thing that happened while I hung out with them was when I was helping Pax get dressed for school. They were watching a movie while they ate breakfast and when I helped him take his pajama shirt off, I pulled it over his head. Right after it came off (and keep in mind it only crossed his face for about a second!) he asked, "Ali, what did I miss?" Adorable!

For Halloween, the twins dressed up as Optimus Prime & Island Princess Barbie (with some butterfly wings).

We took them to school and then Liz dropped me off at my house. My mom had the day off, so I borrowed her car to go down and have lunch with my dad and our buddy Ken. We went to my dad's favorite sushi spot, which was great because sushi basically doesn't exist in North Carolina. We had a good time with some good food and baseball talk. After that, I went to the King County election office to vote early—because the absentee ballot I requested never showed up. The place was absolutely packed and there was a two hour wait and I wasn't about to get in line. One of the volunteers told me the office was also open on Saturday from 9 to 3, so I decided I would try again the following day.

I headed home to meet Cheryl and we went back to her house to hang for a little bit before heading out with our friends. Although it was Halloween, our party was planned for Saturday night, so we met some friends and checked out the new Kevin Smith flick, Zack and Miri Make a Porno. I love Kevin Smith movies, but it was just okay. I would recommend it to my friends, but maybe just as a rental. As far as funny movies I've seen recently go, it certainly ranks behind Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Step Brothers, but probably ahead of Sexdrive, Pineapple Express and Tropic Thunder.

After the movie, Cheryl, Megan, Horia, Caroline and I walked to 7-Eleven for some Slurpees—another one of my dietary staples that don't exist in North Carolina. Then we headed home and got some sleep...a lot was planned for Saturday!

P.B. Slices

2008-10-29T21:19:00.000-07:00

I have to try these because I love PB&Js ... and I'm lazy.

Attention Gregy...

2008-10-27T22:27:00.001-07:00

Game on! Seriously, we need to do try this the next time we see each other. Deal?

Hilariously Weird Tug of War - Watch more free videos

Another awesome weekend

2008-10-26T16:21:00.001-07:00

On Friday afternoon, I got done with the final project hanging over my head at work and it felt really good. It was a big relief because I knew I had another fun-filled weekend coming up.

Another intern and I took off from work a little early on Friday and headed out to Chapel Hill for "Late Night With Roy," which is the University of North Carolina's annual pep rally for the impending basketball season. We first went to South Point Mall to get some food. My friend is a big fan of Panera, so that's where we went. I had been to a Panera when it first opened in Redmond, but didn't think much of it. This, however, was pretty dang good...much better than I remembered! We then headed out to campus, getting there at about 7. We parked in a centrally-located parking garage and walked over to the "Dean Dome," where they play basketball. It was a little bit of a walk, but it was nice to see the campus. I was very impressed with Duke's campus last weekend, but I think I like UNC's better. Lots of brick...big, beautiful trees...the quintessential college feel.

We got into the Dean Dome (which is really called the Dean E. Smith Center) at about 7:15, thinking the event started at 7:30. But when we got in, the women's basketball skits were already underway and we determined that the event must have started at 7. Missing part of the women's portion was actually good though, considering I'd rather watch paint dry than women's basketball (note: unless Madi's playing).

The arena is huuuuuuuge! With a capacity of 21,750, it's much bigger than the Key Arena, which holds 17,098. So, needless to say, I've never seen so much baby blue in my entire life! We had to sit in the very top row, which gave my legs a workout! Despite not knowing a lot about UNC's basketball team, it was a lot of fun. The men's team is ranked first in the country in preseason polls, which isn't surprising considering they have all five starters from last year returning—including three probable first-round draft picks in Ty Lawson, Tyler Hansbrough & Wayne Ellington. The place was absolutely electric, I got some goosebumps and it was a good time.

After that was over, we walked through campus again and headed up to Franklin Street—the happening street near the school with lots of bars, clubs, places to eat and little shops. It's sort of like The Ave in Seattle, only a lot nicer. My buddy wanted to take me to a frozen yogurt place called The Yogurt Pump (or the YoPo, as it's often called). I knew it would be good when there was a line out the door. We waited in the line for about 10 minutes before finally getting inside and seeing a sign that said "Cash Only." Neither of us had cash, so we got out of line and headed up the street to Ben & Jerry's. C'mon YoPo...get with the now! After some ice cream, we headed back to the car and headed home. It was a great time

Because I didn't get to bed until about 5, I did some serious sleeping in on Saturday. I woke up at about 2, but them came out to my recliner in the living room and slept for another couple hours. I'm such a lazy bum. At about 4:30, I got up and made some coffee and oatmeal while I got directions up to Toad's Place in Richmond, Virginia, where I was heading to see an awesome concert.

When I got the tickets, I didn't realize how far away Richmond was. Despite driving through on my way up to DC, I didn't realize it was two and a half hours from Durham. Oh well, the lineup was worth it. The bill included NOFX, Dillinger Four, Teenage Bottlerocket and The Flatliners...all awesome bands and certainly worth the drive.

I headed out at about 5:30 and got into Richmond at about 8. The club was very easy to find and Richmond seemed to be pretty nice. Granted, I didn't see a lot of it, but I liked the cobblestone streets and there was a little canal that ran right by the club.

I got in just as a band called Fake Problems were finishing up. The Flatliners took the stage after them and it was the second time I've seen them. They're from Toronto and I saw them open for A Wilhelm Scream a while back at Studio Seven. I thought they were pretty good that time, but I thought they were awesome this time around. They play really fast in-your-face punk with a little bit of ska (sans horns) mixed in for good measure. If you like the Suicide Machines, you should check out The Flatliners. They're on Fat Wreck Chords and I need to check out their albums because I've certainly enjoyed their live show.

Up next was Teenage Bottlerocket from Laramie, Wyoming. They play really bouncy, bubblegum pop punk, similar to The Ramones and Screeching Weasel. It's catchy, it's fun and they played a good set. I was just reminded by checking them out on Interpunk.com that I need to check out a band called The Lillingtons.

After Teenage Bottlerocket, Dillinger Four took the stage. It was the last show on the tour (called the Paddy vs. Fatty tour, as Paddy is the singer for D4 and Fatty = Fat Mike from NOFX). Paddy from D4 was trashed. Not only did the guys come out already really drunk, I don't think I've seen a band drink more on stage. Beers after every song...some whiskey...the guitar player was drinking a bottle of wine...it was pretty crazy. They're also the only band I've ever seen that sets up lawn chairs on the stage so they can sit down when they get tired. As a fat guy who gets tired easily, I can appreciate that! They ripped through an awesome set and, although I've like them for a long time, I realized I really need to get their newer albums and listen to them more often. They're a really great band and Paddy lived up to expectations by taking off most of his clothes during the set. They had a big crew on the side of the stage that was also rocking out and getting naked.

After that was the band everyone came for...NOFX. Last night marked (I think) the seventh time I've seen them live (four Warped Tours—Kingdome parking lot, San Diego and twice at the Gorge) and three clubs (DV8, Showbox SoDo & Toad's Place). They always put on a great set and last night was no exception. I quickly found out that my trek from Durham was weak compared so some other people. In line, I heard some girl say that she drove out from Colorado Springs and I talked to a couple before D4 played that said they drove 12 hours from Montreal for the show. Awesome! I was in the crowd for the other four bands and had made my way up to about the third row by the time they took the stage. They said they hadn't played Richmond in about 10 years, so that was pretty cool. They also made fun of Richmond and Virginia the entire time, which was funny. The pit got a little too wild, so after a couple songs I headed up to the balcony and found a place where I could see. The thing about Toad's Place is that they serve alcohol there, but they don't restrict people drinking to a certain area. So, there were people trying to mosh with full beers, which just doesn't work too well. My shirt was soaked with beer and sweat by the end of the night.

Here's the most-accurate setlist I could put together. Some of the songs might be out of order and they may have played one or two that I forgot, but here it is...

• Intro
• It's My Job To Keep Punk Rock Elite
• (half of) 180 Degrees—during this song, the crowd surged forward, pushing the barrier that separated the crowd from the stage, thus squishing the security guards. NOFX had to stop playing to get everyone to scoot back to unsquish the guys. They tried to pick up where they left off, but that didn't work, so they just moved on...
• Seeing Double At The Triple Rock
• Reeko (after this song, Fat Mike said, "That was the worst song you'll hear all night. Sometimes we play all good songs, but we usually only do that in good cities...so you're getting a lot of duds.")
• F*ck The Kids
• Perfect Government
• Eat The Meek—Mike introduced this song by saying, "This song is for those two guys (pointing to two black security guards). This is black people music, played by white people, for white people."
• Dying Degree
• Drugs Are Good
• Soul Doubt
• Murder The Government—I love how Mike always changes the first verse of this song. The album version goes: "I wanna see the Constitution burn...wanna watch the White House overturn...wanna witness some blue blood bleed red." On their second live CD, he say "I wanna see Dick Cheney have a heart attack...wanna see Jenna and Barbara go to Iraq...wanna see our president do time." When I saw them at the Showbox in May, he said something like, "I wanna see Dick Cheney have a heart attack...wanna see pretty much everyone home from Iraq...wanna see George Bush take a nine iron to the head." Last night, he said, "I wanna see Dick Cheney have a heart attack...I wanna see the White House full of black (again pointing to the two security guards)...I wanna see George Bush deepthroat Obama!" Awesome...
• Louise
• Radio (Rancid cover)
• Quart In Session
• Bob
• She's Nubs
• Linoleum
• The Brews
• Bottles To The Ground
• Whoops I OD'd

Encore:
• Kill All The White Man
• Theme From A NOFX Album—then Melvin stayed on stage playing accordion for about 20 minutes. Good times!

They said they have about 20 new songs and were going to play one of them, but when they said that, some kid booed and Fat Mike was like, "Fine, we're not playing a new song because of that guy." That kid's an idiot and I hope he got punched in the face. So I went and found a YouTube video of the new song, called "The Quitter." Enjoy...

It was an awesome show and, after the set, I found NOFX's tour manager, Kent, at the sound booth and asked him if their show, "Backstage Passport" will be coming out on DVD. He said that it will be released next year on Fat...so, that's awesome!

The drive home went well. I got to my car and heard the last two innings of the game (damn Phillies!), got home, made some food and cleaned up my kitchen with the anticipation that I may be getting a new roommate (with two cats) today. Hasn't happened yet, though, so I'm not sure what's going on...

Last weekend was awesome, this weekend was great and next weekend's going to be even better!

As a side note, all this talk about music reminded me that Matt put up his list of his top 25 favorite albums of all time. Now I want to see what Mike and Kelly's lists would look like. Also, Fernando...you need to start a blog already! C'mon...everybody's doing it! I even took some time to think of some blog names for you. Just pick one...

~~dudeguys.blogspot.com~~ (whoops, already taken)
chileanlikeavillian.blogspot.com
keeptrackoflaco.blogspot.com
thebronzefonz.blogspot.com

Catching Up After An Awesome Weekend

2008-10-20T18:41:00.000-07:00

The reason I didn't blog at all this weekend is because two of my best friends, Matt and Kelly, came out to visit me. I've been friends with Matt since sixth grade and with Kelly since high school. People are always amazed that we all still keep in touch and hang out so often and I know I am very lucky to have such a great group of friends. My dream would be for all of us to live in a cul-de-sac together. Maybe if one of us wins the lottery...

Anyway, Kelly got in late Thursday night. I didn't have to work on Friday (taking a late Columbus Day off), so that was awesome. I picked up Kelly at the airport and we came back to the house. We got back at about midnight and just chilled for a little bit. At about 2 o'clock, Kelly suggested we hit up the grocery store. I wasn't tired, so I thought it was a good idea and we headed down the road to a place called Harris Teeter. It's open 24 hours and it's a nice grocery store, kind of like Top Foods. Kelly found a huge container of cheese balls and we both went some cereal. He went with a couple of my favorites—Golden Grahams and Cap'n Crunch and I tried a new kind, Keebler Cookie Crunch. I went all out, dumping the whole box into a big mixing bowl, which made Kelly laugh so hard, milk almost came out of his nose. I couldn't finish it all though, and the bowl ended up sitting in the sink for the rest of the weekend, getting really soggy and nasty.

We watched "Superbad" and didn't go to bed until 6 in the morning. That made me sleep in until 2:30 on Friday and I felt really bad, because Kelly said he woke up at 12:30. He said he didn't care, though, because he knew we'd make up for it that night. Did we ever...

I found a cool place online that I wanted to take Kelly for lunch. We headed out and found it, but it wasn't open. The reason I wanted to take him there, however, was not for the food, so it didn't really matter. The reason I wanted to take him there was for something the place has in the parking lot...an ass-kicking machine!

Kelly had some fun kicking his own ass...

Then he got ballsy and decided to turn around...

I had some fun too...

That was just the start to a kick-ass weekend! (rimshot!) The restaurant was out in Raleigh, near the airport, so we headed back into Durham and drove around for a bit, ending up at Elmo's Diner, where we had "breakfast." After that, we made our first Locopops stop. I had sweet corn and Mexican chocolate. Sweet corn was pretty good, but Mexican chocolate was the bomb—probably my favorite so far!

We came home and just chilled for a bit, watching some funny videos on the Internet, while we waited for Matt's plane to get in. Matt got in at about 8, so we headed out to the airport and picked him up. He was hungry, so we went to this place down the street from my house called Golden Corral. It's a buffet, but it's a lot better than Old Country. We all stuffed ourselves (I think it was the theme for the weekend). After that, we came home and watched "Forgetting Sarah Marshall," a movie neither of them had seen. After that, we headed back down to Harris Teeter to get some more snacks and so the fellas could get their drink on. We came back and played poker for a while and, once 3 o'clock rolled around, I knew I couldn't go to bed. See, I had agreed to drive one of my co-workers to the airport and he needed to be picked up at 6:45. If I went to bed at 3, I knew I wouldn't wake up and the last thing I wanted to do was flake out on being his ride to the airport. When I called my co-worker at 6:45 to tell him I was on my way over, he was like, "What in the world is going on over there?" I told him my buddies were in town and that we hadn't even gone to bed yet. He laughed and they ended up coming with me to the airport, bantering incessantly in the back seat the entire way there, which had him cracking up.

I finally got to bed at about 8:30 and slept until about 1. We woke up and headed out to show Matt around beautiful downtown Durham. We first headed to the Q Shack and it was awesome, as usual. Then we went downtown and hit up Locopops again. This time, I had chocolate rosemary (mmm!) and Moroccan curry, which was interesting. It was a coconut popsicle with curry powder mixed in. Not something I would think of, but I've never had anything bad at that place. I love it! Then we drove around Duke's campus. Cheryl—remember when we drove around there a bit? Well, inside that stone block that we saw, there's a road that heads out of there and the campus is HUUUUUUUUUUUGE! That little area we saw, is probably just about 5% of the campus. We drove around there and saw the Duke Chapel and all of the people heading to the Duke vs. Miami football game. After that, we headed to the mall and walked around for a bit. The guys did a little shopping and then we decided to see a movie. We saw "Sexdrive" (I guess it was the weekend of comedies). It was a little cheesy, but it was also a lot funnier than I expected. Overall, I would recommend it if you're a fan of "Superbad." Then we headed back down to Harris Teeter and picked up some pizza at a place called Randy's Pizza. It was awesome. We headed back to my place, watched the rest of the baseball game and then some SNL. It was a lot more low key. We just chilled out—Matt and I played some Fantastic Contraption on our laptops and Kelly beat Portal on my 360. We went to bed at 5.

Sunday we woke up and headed back out to Elmo's. I haven't been a lot of places around here, but I think I'd be hard pressed to find a better breakfast spot. We all pigged out on omelets and pancakes and then headed back to the house where we watched some football. We didn't really think about dinner (probably because we had breakfast/lunch so late), so by the time we got around to that, pretty much everything was closed. A fast-food chicken place called Bojangles was open, so we went there. Matt and I got some chicken biscuits and Kelly ate the leftover pizza. We came back to the house and played some poker while we watched the Rays beat the Red Sox to go to the World Series! What a great game! At about 12:30, I had to go to bed. The guys had to go to the airport at 4:45. They were going to just stay up and sleep on their respective planes, but I had to get some sleep because I had to work today.

My roommate got back late Sunday night and, as I was heading to bed, he told me it would be his last night in the house. He decided to quit his masters program and move back home and become a teacher again. Kind of a bummer and it sounds like I'll probably be getting another rommate, maybe two. We'll see...

So I went to bed, but woke myself up with hiccups at 3 in the morning. That has never happened to me before and it was very painful, because I also had some bad heartburn. My stomach felt like a garbage truck full of acidic pig slop driving down a freeway with speed bumps. Not fun. Just as I woke up, Kelly snuck into my room to get an iPod chord and I said hey. He said they were playing cards still, but had switched from poker to gin rummy. So I said, "what the hell" and headed back out there. We played some gin rummy until they had to head to the airport and then I got to sleep for a couple more hours when I got back. Better than nothing, I suppose, but I was still really wiped at work today. Honestly, I can't remember the last time I've been that tired. Needless to say, I came home after work and crashed in my recliner and now I'm about to head to bed after I click "Publish Post."

I came home for lunch and Josh was just packing up his car. We talked for a bit as I ate and then I did the dishes, because I didn't want his last memory of me to be the nastiest sink in the world. But then I had to go to the bathroom and he said goodbye by knocking on the door...so much for a good last impression!

This writeup probably makes it sound more boring than it actually was, but we really had a great time and I was so glad they could make it out here. I'm so lucky to have the best friends in the world!

I need some recipes

2008-10-15T15:44:00.000-07:00

Ok loyal readers—I need your help!

While I'm very proud of the fact that I'm able to churn out delicious meals like this one...

...my skills are very limited. Pretty much every night I have to ask myself, "What's for dinner tonight: spaghetti or mac 'n' cheese?" Kind of pathetic...

So, help a brotha' out! Help me diversify my easy dinner portfolio! In the comments, post your favorite EASY (and I mean easy) dinner recipe. Break it down for me, because if you leave any loopholes, I'll surely find a way to screw it up...

October 13, 2008

2008-10-13T21:25:00.000-07:00

It was a great day at work today. Why? Well, it was actually an optional day. Apparently we get Columbus Day off—that's how awesome BA is! I actually decided to work today and am instead taking Friday off, because my friends will be in town. So it was a nice, quiet day at the office and I got a lot done. After work, I came home, made dinner and then went to the grocery store with Josh. Came back, watched the rest of the game and got inspired...

Remember what my room looked like a couple days ago? Well, I got inspired and decided to clean it tonight. After all ... Matt and Kelly will be here this weekend! Here's some proof...

My room...

Ok, so I have a little bit of laundry to do. But I even cleaned off/organized my desk...

And, just so Kelly doesn't accuse me of cheating, here's a picture of my closet...

Up next ... cleaning out my car!

October 12, 2008

2008-10-12T19:31:00.000-07:00

Lazy weekend

It was a real lazy weekend for me—but I knew it was going to be and I'm okay with it. On Friday after work, I went to the grocery store to stock up on some snacks because I knew I'd just be chillin' at the house all weekend. After that, I just watched some baseball, played Fantastic Contraption, played some Madden and goofed around on the Internet until 4 in the morning. That caused me to sleep in until about 3 on Saturday. When I finally got up, I headed to the mall to return some shoes. I got the shoes this summer at Nordstrom in Bellevue. I really liked them (although they were annoyingly squeaky) but they had already started to fall apart. As I expected, the Nordstrom out here didn't have them, but returning them was easy (of course!) and I found a sweet pair of Asics...

I also did some more digital shopping. Here's what I found this time around...

For Megan: some computer speakers that look like giant ear buds!

For my dad: The Dude action figure!

For Matt (or anyone else interested...): A daily calendar that has 365 different sexual positions!

I actually got a digital gift for Greg, but Cheryl said it was such a good find that it might turn into an actual gift...

After the mall yesterday, I was just hanging out when a buddy from work called and asked if I wanted to catch the rest of the game at a sports bar right by the office. I said sure and he came over a little later and picked me up. We headed up there, but only stayed 5 minutes because the place was an absolute joke. They call themselves a sports bar, but they only had four TVs and two were playing NASCAR and the other two were playing college football. Lame! we ended up coming back here to watch the rest of the game. Woo Rays!

Today I woke up at a more-reasonable 12:30, ate some cereal (Cookie Crisp) and watched a little football before heading back out to the mall. My new shoes are really skinny, so my jeans always slip underneath, which I absolutely HATE! So I went to find a new pair of jeans that isn't as loose as my current rotation. I found a great pair at Eddie Bauer. When I got home, I put them on and they still do it a little bit, but they look good and I don't think they'll do it as much. Still kind of frustrating though.

When I got back from the mall, I noticed that the house smelled a little funny. So I did the dishes tonight and nearly puked. It literally smelled like someone sat in the sink and took a dump. Husband training won't be complete until I begin to put my dirty dishes directly into the dishwasher, instead of letting them pile up in the sink...

Favorite cereals

2008-10-12T00:08:00.000-07:00

A conversation at work the other day got me thinking about my favorite cereals. If you don't know, cereal is my favorite food. I could (and have, on many occasions) eat it every meal of the day. I love pretty much all cereals, but here are my 10 favorite kinds, in order...

1) Golden Grahams
2) Cap'n Crunch (with Crunch Berries)
3) Fruity Pebbles
4) Rice Krispie Treats cereal
5) Life / Cinnamon Life
6) Oh's
7) Cocoa Krispies
8) Frosted Flakes
9) Frosted Mini Wheats
10) Sugar Smacks

There's a ton more that I love that missed the cut. What are your favorites?

The Odd Couple

2008-10-10T20:57:00.000-07:00

My roommate Josh and I get along really well, but we don't exactly have the same habits. He goes to bed at 10:30 and wakes up at 5; I go to bed at 2 and wake up at 9. He shaves everyday; I hate shaving once a week. He studies all night; I watch baseball and play Madden. He actually works out; I pretend to work out. And there's this...

His room...

My room...

His desk...

My desk...

The funniest thing that happened to me today

2008-10-09T21:31:00.000-07:00

For the past few weeks, I've been texting back and fourth with my aunt about yogurt, of all things. See, when Cheryl and I passed through Colorado, we stayed with her and my uncle (and Jack!). In the morning, Cheryl and I were eating breakfast and my aunt asked me if I like yogurt. I told her that I do and she recommended this Greek brand that she loves, Fage.

On Sept. 13, I couldn't remember the name of the yogurt, so I texted her. Here's how our conversation has gone over the past few weeks...

Me: Hey, what's that yogurt you said was your fave?
Her: Fage I like the 0 percent fat one. I think it's 80 calories!
Me: Oh yeah, thanks!

I couldn't find it at the grocery store but, a couple weeks later, I saw it when I was out at Target one day and picked one up.

Me: You're crazy. This yogurt tastes like sour cream!
Her: Not!

The other day, back at Target, I saw the same brand, but instead of just being the plain yogurt, the little container had two sections—90 percent of it was yogurt, but there was also some honey. I decided to give it another shot and it was delicious! But it was also 250 calories. I texted her again today and this is what took place...

Me: I found Fage with honey. Waaaaay tastier. Of course it's also 250 calories. Such is life...
Her: Here's what u do. sprinkle it with splenda and add some fresh berries. I like raspberries! That makes it tastier and keeps the calories down.
Me: Good call. I'll give it a shot because it's growing on me!
Her: Can I ask you a personal question?

My mind started racing. What could she possibly want to know?!?

Me: Sure
Her: Who are you?

I lost it! I almost fell out of my chair I was laughing so hard! My aunt had a text messaging conversation that spanned nearly a month with what was apparently A COMPLETE STRANGER!!! I texted her and then called her right away and we were both laughing too hard to even get words out for the first minute of airtime. Too good!

Play this game

2008-10-08T22:48:00.001-07:00

Some people over at Lookout Landing pointed me in the direction of this awesome little game and it's completely addictive. It's definitely one of the best internet games I've ever played. It's really fun and really challenging, but it's also good for learning more about physics and engineering. When you actually complete a level (especially after the first few), it's a very rewarding feeling and I wouldn't make fun of you if you said you got up and did a little dance. Check it out, but don't blame me if three hours slips by...

Fantastic Contraption

October 8, 2008

2008-10-08T19:20:00.000-07:00

Con(n)or Glassey: Fashion-Forward Yogurt Connoisseur...

It was a pretty good day at work. I've been doing a lot of data entry lately for the books that come out this winter, so that can be a little slow, but I was very surprised and excited to see that one of my articles is being featured on the front page of Baseball America's Web site. I'd link to it, but you have to be a subscriber to read it, so that's kind of pointless. So I was really excited to see that and I clicked on the link for the story ... and my name was spelled wrong. It's no biggie, I'm obviously used to it and it will get changed ASAP.

Remember how I said I wanted a haircut yesterday? Well, after work today I decided to drive to Target and pick up a pair of clippers. They were only $20, so if I cut my hair twice (and I'll do it way more than that), they easily pay for themselves. Paying $15 for someone else to buzz my head is just ridiculous. So I got those and I also restocked my fridge with yogurt, because Target is the only place I know of out here that sells my favorite yogurt—Yoplait Light Banana Cream Pie. I also got a few Rachel Ray yogurts and this weird Greek brand my aunt Joan recommended. I guess I'm a yogurt connoisseur...

Anyway, I got home and was delighted to see a package from my sister and parents. It was filled with all kinds of goodies—thanks guys!

After looking through that, I decided to give my new clippers a whirl. Are you supposed to wet your hair? I don't know what I did wrong, but it seemed a lot more difficult than it usually is when my mom or Cheryl do it. I've even done it myself before (back when I was roommates with Joe Harkins) and it seemed a lot harder than that time as well. I was thinking about trying out a mohawk for a while, as my ticket onto the Rays bandwagon, but I quickly scrapped that idea when I was having difficulty even buzzing the hair off the sides of my head. About halfway through, I was getting pretty worried...

I kept going and it turned out okay, I guess...

Cleaning up was easy and I hopped in the shower to get all the little hairs off me. When I got out, I realized that I had a few straggling hairs, so I grabbed the scissors that came with the kit instead of busting out the clippers again. Bad idea...

I'm calling this look "The Bear Attack." Maybe it'll start a trend. Maybe not. I think I'm wearing a hat to work tomorrow...

I got tagged!

2008-10-07T21:27:00.000-07:00

Kari tagged me the other day, requesting that I fill out this survey, so here goes nothing...

9 TV Shows I watch:
• baseball
• football
• Curb Your Enthusiasm
• Project Runway
• Saturday Night Live
• The Office
• 30 Rock
• The Soup
• Seinfeld

9 of my favorite restaurants:
• Q Shack
• Jimmy John's
• Red Mill
• King's Teriyaki
• Matt's Famous Chili Dogs
• Sushiland
• This little Mexican place in Snohomish...not even sure what it's called, but it's awesome.
• Alligator Soul
• Cereality (haven't even been there, but trust me...it's my favorite!)

9 things that happened yesterday:
• Woke up
• Shaved
• Took a shower
• Went to work
• Ate lunch
• Came home
• Watched some baseball
• Talked to Cheryl
• Went to bed. Exciting, right?

9 things that I am looking forward to:
In chronological order...
• Talking to Cheryl tonight
• Matt & Kelly visiting me
• World Series
• NOFX concert
• Coming home for Halloween
• Mariners hiring a GM
• Election Day
• Megan coming to visit me
• Coming home for Christmas

9 things on my wish list:
• an awesome job
• a house
• a great Mariners GM
• an after-work game of Wiffle Ball
• a haircut
• cooking lessons
• a maid
• Rays winning the World Series
• more iPhone apps

9 people that I tag:
I wish more of my friends blogged, but they don't. Kari already tagged Anna Marie. I'm pretty sure Mike and Kelly won't do this. Katie—do you read my blog? If so, you're up!

October 1, 2008

2008-10-01T19:07:00.000-07:00

Dead ballplayers, playoff predictions & Cheerwine

I went to bed early tonight and felt refreshed this morning—and it's been a while, with a busy weekend and then feeling exhausted on Monday. I was a little better yesterday, but today I felt great. And, it was an awesome day at work. I started off doing some data entry, but the day got better as it went on. Yesterday I got to write a little piece that will end up in the next issue, so that was cool, and today I got to write some obituaries (no, I didn't write one for the Mariners!). I did, however, write one for a guy that went to CWU, which was a strange little coincidence. In the afternoon, we all crowded into the conference room to watch some playoff baseball. Not the whole game, but the final few innings. It's such an awesome change—from sneaking peeks at box scores at my old job, to watching the game with everyone in the office. I definitely can't complain!

At work, we all put playoff predictions up on a white board, so I thought I'd share mine here, so everyone can see how I'm thinking...

ALCS: Red Sox & Rays
NLCS: Dodgers & Phillies
World Series: Dodgers & Rays
Winner: Tampa Bay Rays

There's a lot of talk about the Angels being the best team in baseball, but I think they're a bit overrated. Sure, they won 100 games—the most in the majors—but, remember, the AL West was pretty pathetic this year. For me, winning 97 or 95 in the AL East (as the Rays and Sox did) is more impressive. The fourth-place Blue Jays won 86 games, which would have put them second in the AL West. As for the Rays, I was one of only two guys in the office that believes they can take it all. I love this team—they just have "it," they have that swagger. They've been underdogs all year, but I actually think that's in their favor. A lot of these guys came up through the system together and they have something to prove. But it goes beyond that—they obviously have the talent too. They can pitch, they can hit, they can run, they play good defense. They can do it all. Joe Maddon is a great manager—he's tactically sound, he's gutsy and he knows how to get the most of his players. But, if they don't win it all this year, they'll have plenty of other chances, as this is a great young team with an excellent front office and a lot more help coming through the system. The best is yet to come in Tampa.

In the National League, I think it comes down to pitching. The Cubs will be the favorites, but I think the Dodgers have one of the best rotations in baseball, and they'll be tough to beat in a five-game series. Add in a red-hot Manny Ramirez and I like them over the Cubs. A sick part of me would take pleasure in seeing the Cubbies lose in the World Series—especially to Lou Piniella's old team—but I don't think they'll get that far. As much as I'd love to see my boy Mike Cameron in the World Series, the Phillies over the Brewers was the easiest pick of the playoffs. They have solid starting pitching and a thunderous lineup. With Ben Sheets out for the Brew Crew, I don't see this one going past four games.

After work I went grocery shopping. Mostly the usual stuff, although I'm trying out whole wheat spaghetti and I got three different kinds of mac n' cheese (whole wheat, thick n' creamy and organic cheddar), so I'll let you know which one is best. I also got a soda called Cheerwine, which is a local product. It's tagline is "A Cherry Different Soda," but it's not a cola. But it's not like pure cherry soda either—it's a little like Dr. Pepper, and my initial reaction is that it's pretty good. I also got some more of those salsa cups, because those were a huge hit the last time around and I'm going to take another crack at cooking collard greens. Hopefully they turn out better than last time's disaster...

Now I'm just chillin', watching the playoff games and doing some baseball research. Good times!

I'm Conor Glassey ... And I Approve This Message

2008-09-28T19:06:00.000-07:00

Sorry I haven’t posted in a while—but I have a good excuse. I’ve been up in Washington DC for the past few days with my family. That’s probably why nobody’s complained around here—I’m with 3/5 of my readers! Anyway, for you other two, here’s a recap…

The reason I came up to DC was because my dad was coming out here for an annual business trip. When I got the internship, his trip turned into a family get-together, as DC is just a few hours north of Durham. I took off from work a little early on Wednesday to drive up here. Most people told me the drive would take about three to three and a half hours but, even without traffic, it took a little more than four. I ended up parking at the southern-most Metro station at about 7 and then took the train into Arlington, Virginia, where my parents had a room at the Hilton.

The Metro stations have some of the longest escalators I've ever seen!

Cheryl was flying standby and got shut out on Wednesday, which was a real bummer. When I got to the hotel, dad was out, so I went to dinner with mom. We just hung out that night, but got up early on Thursday morning, hopped on the Metro and got our tourist on. We got off on the wrong metro stop and ended up walking a ways, but we saw the Washington Monument, got a nice view of the Capitol Building and saw the Lincoln Memorial and the Vietnam Memorial. After that, we took a cab out to Georgetown where I found a great BBQ joint called Rocklands. If you’re ever in DC, hit it up and try the corn pudding. So good! After lunch, I got a call from Cheryl and she made it onto the first flight Thursday morning, which was such a great relief!

Cheryl in front of the Capitol Building on Saturday afternoon.

So, after lunch, mom and I hopped on a bus and got back to the Metro line, where we went home and kicked up our feet for a while before I headed out to the airport to meet Cheryl. She got in at about 4:30, we got back to the hotel and had plans to head out to the Nationals game. But, it was raining pretty hard and was scheduled to rain even harder. So, we didn’t want to go all the way down there, find tickets and then sit in the rain while the game got cancelled. Instead, we went out to dinner with some of the guys out here for my dad’s conference. I felt relieved when the game was cancelled, because I would have been a little bummed if they ended up playing it.

Friday morning we all slept in a little more and then headed out for more sightseeing. We went to the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History and the National Art Gallery. That took up pretty much the whole day and wiped us out, so we headed home after that and then ordered some pizzas from a place called Piero and took it easy that night, watching the presidential debate on TV.

Cheryl is funny!

It was a big day on Saturday. I was really looking forward to heading back to the National Mall for the Library of Congress Book Festival. I was excited for this because Judith Viorst was scheduled to be there. For those that don’t know, Viorst is the author of “Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day”—my favorite children’s book and the inspiration for my first tattoo.

I got in line with Cheryl to show Ms. Viorst my tattoo and she was floored. She asked me if it was permanent, which was cute, and then told me that her son Alexander has a tattoo of a bicycle in the same place, because he loves bicycles. It was the first Alexander tattoo she had ever seen, which I thought was awesome.

After that, Cheryl, mom and I went to a Jim Henson art exhibit, which was really neat and then Cheryl and I went over to the Holocaust Memorial Museum. We headed back to the hotel for a little bit before embarking on a Monuments at Night tour, which was a little long, but a lot of fun. We got to see all the stuff Cheryl missed on Thursday morning, plus got a great view of the White House, Arlington National Cemetery, the FDR Memorial, the Thomas Jefferson Memorial and the Iwo Jima Memorial, among other things.

I told you Cheryl is funny!

At the Vietnam Memorial, a man noticed that I was wearing a Seahawks hat and asked if I was a football fan. I said that I was and he told me a story about Bob Kalsu. Kalsu was drafted out of Oklahoma and played for the Buffalo Bills in 1968. He was voted the team’s top rookie that year, but ended the season with a minor knee injury. After the season, he was drafted. The Bills apparently offered to exaggerate the severity of Kalsu’s knee injury, but he wanted to serve his country. At just 25 years old, Kalsu died in action just two days before his wife gave birth to their son. It was a very sad story that personalized an extremely moving memorial. It’s chilling to see how many names are on those walls. There was one Glassey…

This morning we all woke up, went to IHOP for breakfast and then headed out to the Washington National Cathedral. We missed the services being offered, but it was fine because we still got to walk around the breathtakingly-beautiful building that took nearly 90 years to build. There are all kinds of gargoyles throughout the building, including Darth Vader. After that, mom and dad headed back to the hotel and Cheryl and I headed downtown to continue exploring. We went back to the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History because a new exhibit had just opened and then went up to the National Portrait Gallery, where there were portraits of many Presidents, some great political cartoons by longtime Washington Post cartoonist Herbert Block, an exhibit with all kinds of old movie, music and political posters and an exhibit featuring hip-hop and graffiti photography.

It was a blast!

Hey Cosmo!

2008-09-22T13:04:00.000-07:00

Whoever called me today using HeyCosmo.com, I'm sorry to say that I didn't get the message. I must have pressed the wrong button or something because it didn't work. It just beeped at me three times and then hung up. I tried to call back, but they said the software is in beta mode and cannot retrieve messages. Try again—I have my guesses, but I'm curious to know who it was!

September 20, 2008

2008-09-20T23:36:00.001-07:00

Crop circles, fat twins & hand dryers

The morning started out a little rough. I slept through the alarm I set (probably because I didn't end up going to bed until 4) and woke up at 11. I was worried that I wouldn't be able to make it to Tire King in time to get my oil changed. See, they don't take reservations on the weekends, it's on a first-come, first-serve basis. Plus, they close at 1 on Saturdays and aren't open on Sundays. Convenient. Things didn't get any better when, on the way out the door, my shoe got caught on the screen door somehow and I faceplanted on the walkway—landing, almost exclusively, on my right pinkie nail. I'm actually surprised it didn't bleed and isn't sore right now. I hate that screen door. The hinges are really tight and it always seems like it's attacking me.

I didn't get lost this time, although it took me a little while to maneuver my way to the place because some streets were blocked off downtown for an art festival. I got in and they had room for me to get my oil changed and tires rotated. I just made it though because, literally, about a minute after I handed the guy my keys, a couple came in and he told them they were booked up for the day. Phew! It only took a few minutes and only cost $15, thanks to a coupon I had. Every Durham Bulls ticket is worth $5 off an oil change at Tire King. Plus, for every batter a Bulls pitcher strikes out, another dollar is added on. So, when I went to see Jeff Niemann pitch and he nearly threw a no-no, that took an extra $13 off my bill. Thanks, Jeff!

After the oil change, I decided to walk around the art festival a little bit, since it was right next door. I strolled through, but nothing really caught my eye. Oh, actually that's not true. There was one guy there that did silk screenings of his old Atari system and of crop circles. That was my favorite I guess. I couldn't stay at the festival long, because I had to be at the mall at 2 for my follow-up eye exam. But, I decided to grab lunch while I was there. After all, there was a Thai booth and I think that's a rarity around here. So I pulled money out from the ATM and got absolutely raped on the service charge. $4.95! I paid $6 one time in Vegas, which should be illegal, but that's what you get for sucking at blackjack, I guess. I never would have thought that my second-biggest fee would be at a rinky-dink arts festival in Durham. The Pad Thai sucked, too...

After lunch, I zipped down to the mall. I grabbed a coffee and walked around Barnes and Noble for a little while, as I had about 15 minutes to kill before my appointment. I had actually been meaning to look around there sometime this weekend because the new Guinness Book of World Records came out recently and I wanted to look though for a beatable record. One of my biggest goals in life (in the top 5 on my "bucket list," you could say) is to someday be the holder some sort of world record (worst beard?). There was one that I had my eye on last year, but evidently I wasn't the only one that thought it was easily beatable, because it's changed hands this year. I did see that the world largest collection of back scratchers is at a dermatology office in Fayetteville, NC. Maybe I'll check it out sometime. The back scratcher I got myself at Prairie Dog Town has been invaluable to me out here! I also flipped through a book of North Carolina Day Trips and found the perfect place for my dad to have a vacation house: Bald Head Island!

I also saw something at Barnes and Noble that I wanted to buy for my friend Caroline, but didn't. It's the thought that counts though, right? Instead, I took a picture. We can call it a digital gift!

My eye exam went really well. The trial contacts that I got last weekend bothered me all week. When I could focus on things, they were really good, but they felt like they were constantly sliding around, which made focusing difficult. I saw a different doctor this time (last week was a sub) and she was great. She assured me that the prescription was correct, it's just that some people have difficulty with different types of plastic. She gave me two different brands to try this week and I have to call when I decide which one is best. Already, the first pair I tried is 10x better than the last set. It could just be a placebo effect, but I'll take it.

After the appointment, I walked around the mall for a bit. I decided to do some laps and get my daily exercise in. I had to laugh at myself after I made the decision, because I was like...walking around the mall for exercise? What am I, 80? But, let me tell you, those 80-year-olds know what's up. Exercise is so much enjoyable when it's air-conditioned and you can window shop and people watch at the same time! I saw an woman with the highest pants I've ever seen, a pair of female twins where one was fat and one was skinny (awkward!) and members of the Georgia soccer team. I tried on some sunglasses and also went into Spencer's for a little bit. I realized that getting Carolina a digital gift without having something to show Horia would be a little rude, so I found this badass hoodie. The hood zips up over your face to make a mask (with little mesh eyeholes. Wicked!

After that, I got my picture taken with the Chick-Fil-A cow and then did a few more laps. Altogether, I walked about a mile in a little under an hour. Oh yeah, I also wanted to mention the bathrooms at the mall, because they reminded me of something I never mentioned in an earlier blog. The bathrooms at the mall have these high-powered hand dryers called XLERATORS. They're pretty cool. They work really well (they actually make your skin ripple, which is funny), but they're nothing compared to the Dyson AirBlade they had in the bathroom at the St. Louis Arch.

After the mall, I came home, played some Madden, listened to the M's, put up a post on USSM, made the awesome video under this post, watched SNL (meh...) and Skyped with Cheryl. I found a sports bar to hit up tomorrow so I can finally see the Hawks play. Maybe they can pull out a win!

Watch out Scott Culver!

2008-09-20T20:45:00.000-07:00

So I spent a little more time with iMovie today and created this gem...

Is this digital smothering?

September 19, 2008

2008-09-19T20:43:00.000-07:00

I was pretty excited for work this morning—mostly because it was announced yesterday that we'd all be heading to The Q-Shack for lunch. I skipped breakfast, mostly because I woke up late, but it was okay because I knew I'd want to be hungry for lunch. Plans changed, however, due to some time constraints and Q-Shack was re-scheduled for Monday. So, we ended up going to a nearby Mexican joint called El Dorado instead. It's nothing special, but it's cheap, fast and they have horchata, so I can't complain too much. Plus it's always fun whenever we have a big group going to lunch together.

After work I came home and, for some reason, started organizing all the movie files on my computer. Cheryl and I love taking videos with our camera, but all of the videos we've uploaded to the computer (and there were nearly 60 of them) are ambiguously titled. So I watched them all, gave them all appropriate titles and put them into folders. Jen Bean would be proud!

Here are the four best ones I found (and uploaded to YouTube)...

"Shy" plants in Hawaii

Ali singing the ABCs (sort of)

Paxton showing off his white-boy dance skills

And Greg getting a pie in the face at his birthday party a few years ago. I actually edited this one with iMovie (which is harder than I thought it would be, but it could be pretty sweet if I get better at it!)

After dinner I headed out to LocoPops, because I haven't been there in a while. I got two popsicles—banana chocolate chip and mint Oreo. Both were amazing and, although they still didn't have T-shirts in stock, they did have free stickers!

USSMariner

2008-09-17T22:38:00.000-07:00

I didn't mention anything about it yesterday, but during my dinner with Dave last night he asked if I'd be interested in joining the crew at USSMariner.com, as he's getting married and Derek already spends tons of time on the site. I said I would, but didn't think anything would come of it—certainly not so quickly! But later that night I got an e-mail from Dave saying he was serious and, less than 24 hours later, I've got my first post up. It's very exciting and actually a bit surreal, as I've been such a huge fan of the site since it's inception (on my birthday) in 2003. Writing for USSM will be a lot of fun. It will sort of be like what I was doing over at StopTheWave, except people will actually read it! It will certainly be an interesting off-season, so I'm sure there will be plenty to talk about over there and I'm happy to be a part of it!

Oh, and to get an idea of what a link on USSM can do for your site, check out this graph of the visitors here...

September 16, 2008

2008-09-16T20:58:00.000-07:00

It’s been a while since I’ve done a daily recap around here, which apparently annoyed my loyal reader(s), so here goes…

I had a great day at the office today. I went in a little early (because I wanted to take off a little early), but it turned out that I couldn’t actually start work early because the Internet was down at the office. That only lasted about a half hour though, so I wrote my last blog entry for a while, recapping the Texas League championship. After that I worked on writing up some of the most memorable moments of the season for the next issue and then wrote little playoff recaps for another part of the issue. So, including my player feature, there will be three parts of the next issue that I worked on, which is cool.

I was hoping to leave work at about 5:45 because I was meeting a friend for dinner at 6:30 in Burlington, which is about 45 minutes away. But, at about 5:35, one of the designers came up and asked me to proof the page he laid out with the playoff recaps. They had to put an ad on that page, he said, and I needed to cut out 90 lines of text! 90 lines! It took about 20 minutes and right when I was going to save, my computer crashed. We pulled it back up and the changes weren’t there. So, I asked him if this was something he absolutely needed tonight, or if it could wait until the morning. He said it would be fine in the morning, so that’s how my day will begin tomorrow.

So I didn’t end up leaving the office until 6:10. I had no idea what to expect, traffic-wise, but I just put the pedal to the metal and headed out to Burlington. I met up with my buddy Dave and had dinner at a place called O’Charley’s. There was no traffic and I ended up making it out there in just 30 minutes. Dinner was good and it was nice to meet up with Dave. We talked about the Mariners (depressing), his fantasy baseball domination (he was so good after one year the whole league folded), life in Carolina, the price of going to see Duke or UNC play basketball (too much), his wedding/honeymoon, college, all kinds of stuff. Dave’s a great guy—he had a hand in getting me out here in the first place, so I owe him a big one (and a dinner)!

I got lost on the way home, though. Normally I wouldn’t care, but I really had to pee. There’s a part of the freeway where it basically splits and says:

←DURHAM RALEIGH→

Which one would you choose? I stayed left, but that ended up getting me lost. I could have gotten home either way, but I came from the other way, so that’s what I was expecting and it got me turned around. I drove around and around and finally ended up right next to Locopops. Unfortunately they had just closed, otherwise I would have put another stamp on my card! But I knew how to get home from there and finally made it home at about 9:15 (meaning it took me about an hour to get home, or twice as long as it took me to get out there!). So now I’m just chillin’. I watched last week’s Project Runway on YouTube and now I’m reading baseball blogs and looking at stats (shocking, I know).

In random news, I’m growing a beard for my potential Halloween costume. This is just a trial run though because I told Cheryl I’d shave before Washington D.C. Also, my new shoes started falling apart today. I’m taking a page out of the Jean Addams playbook to see if I can get Phil Knight to send me a new pair.

My Top 25 Favorite Albums

2008-09-13T16:19:00.001-07:00

The iPod shuffle post the other day got me inspired to think about my favorite albums of all time. The bottom part of the list is pretty fluid, but here's what I came up with...

Yankees win Governor's Cup

2008-09-12T21:08:00.000-07:00

Not quite the pitching duel I had envisioned! The Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Yankees absolutely destroyed the Durham Bulls, 20-2, to win their first-ever Governor's Cup. On Tuesday they'll play the winner of the Pacific Coast League in the Bricktown Showdown (check it out on ESPN2). Phil Hughes got off to a shaky start, but absolutely dominated innings two through five. Over the five innings, he gave up one run on four hits, walked four and struck out 12!

The game was basically over in the third inning, with the Yankees already ahead 10-0. There were many rowdy Yankees fans in the crowd and whenever they would get too loud and obnoxious, the scoreboard operator would show the AL East standings. That was awesome and shut them up every time.

But, the best part of the game (aside from Hughes' ridiculous curveball) was listening to the two kids behind me. They were about seven years old and were sitting with one of the kid's dad and grandpa. The kid's older brother and his friend (probably 12 or 13 ) were sitting in the next row down, on the other end of the aisle. We were right behind home plate, so there was an attractive teenage girl that was taking concessions orders for the people in our section. One of the 12-year-old kids ordered some food, so the dad yelled down to him, "Hey! When she comes back, make sure you give her a tip." Then, this conversation happened...

7-year-old: Why, so he can get the babes?
Dad: No, just because tipping's the nice thing to do.
7-year-old: Oh, so you want him to stay a homo?

I couldn't make that up if I tried.

A few innings later he asked his dad if the radar gun my co-worker was using was a taser.

I sweat playing XBox

2008-09-11T22:57:00.000-07:00

Not because I'm out of shape, because my 360 gets ridiculously hot. At least now I know that I don't have to buy a space heater for the winter. If I'm cold, I'll just play some video games!

September 11, 2008

2008-09-11T20:54:00.000-07:00

Sorry I didn't post yesterday, I stayed up late watching the Rays beat the Red Sox (Go Rays!) and was too tired to write. But, the coolest thing about yesterday is that I got a package from Cheryl! It was awesome. She sent me a couple framed photos from our wedding day, a few ESPN Magazines, some great candy, some wiffle balls and a cute card.

Today was a great day at work. After my morning blogging, I finally got the player I'm writing my next article about on the phone. He's been a little tough to track down, so it was nice to talk to him. He didn't have a game today, so we were able to chat for about 40 minutes and he was a kick in the pants. Very SoCal — awesome guy and I think the article is coming along nicely. I'll finish it up tomorrow. I've also been calling around to NL front offices, asking the player development departments for their Fall Instructional League rosters, so that's been fun too.

After work I went grocery shopping because I'm out of pretty much everything. I got some good stuff, including some collard greens and ham hocks that I'm going to try and cook. Hopefully my pot is big enough. I also got a little muffin tin and some cornbread mix. Should be an adventure! Here are some of the other cool things I found at the grocery store...

From left to right, you're looking at a coconut soda I found on the Mexican aisle, these really easy steamed broccoli things I found in the produce section, next to the bags of salad (you just throw them in the microwave for three minutes and ... voila! ... steamed broccoli with cheese sauce!), the easiest Easy Mac ever (these will be nice because I can take them to work if I don't feel like making a sandwich. I've been coming home for lunch, but I realized that I'm missing a great opportunity for camaraderie in the break room. Everyone pretty much eats lunch together and it always sounds like they're having a blast), new blackberry Nutri Grain bars, these little salsa cups (no more wasted salsa down the drain and they were the same price per ounce as the jars), peanut butter and honey crackers (you always see peanut butter and cheese, but honey? Too awesome to pass up), and a big jug of sweet tea (mmm ... sweet tea!).

After that I came home, made some dinner and surfed the web a little bit before Brandon Morrow and the M's came on. Brandon looked okay—this is more what I was expecting last time out. I turned it off when it was 6-0 because I'm tired and about to hit the sack. The best baseball news of the night, though, was that Durham won, meaning they lived to play another game tomorrow. It's an awesome pitching match-up too—Phil Hughes vs. Wade Davis. For those of you that aren't prospect junkies, Baseball America ranked Phil Hughes as the fourth-best prospect in baseball in 2007. He's been in the majors, but has had some injury problems, which is why he's still in AAA right now. Wade Davis was ranked the 15th-best prospect coming into this season so, yeah, it's going to be a treat! It's been a very anticipated game around the office and I'm really looking forward to it! On Saturday I'm going to try and an oil change and then I have an eye exam at 5:15. The exam is at the mall I've mentioned before, so maybe I'll go up there a little earlier in the day and walk around a bit, maybe catch a movie. That new Coen Brothers flick (Burn After Reading) looks pretty good. Sunday = football.

Truffle Shuffle

2008-09-09T20:57:00.000-07:00

Instead of doing a post recapping my day (awesome day at work, bike ride, surfed the Internet…happy?), I thought I would do something fun. I’ve seen these types of posts on other blogs and have always wanted to do it myself, but never had the outlet. So here’s the deal: I’m going to put my iPod on random and write a little bit about the next 10 songs that come on. Here goes…

Neutral Milk Hotel – “In The Aeroplane Over The Sea”
I got into this band because my friend Nic recommended them to me. Certain bands always remind me of certain people and this is one that will always remind me of Nic. Everytime I hear them, I like what I hear, but I haven’t listened to their album as much as I would like. This is a great song, though. The acoustic guitar sounds really rich and the singer has a nice voice — similar to the guy from the Decemberists. At about 40 seconds, strings kick in (or is it a saw?) and about 30 seconds later there’s a horn solo of some sort. Definitely a band I should play more often.

NOFX – “It’s My Job To Keep Punk Rock Elite”
The first track off of “So Long …And Thanks For All The Shoes.” The album title’s a play on the title of a Douglas Adams book (So Long And Thanks For All The Fish). I guess Melvin’s a big fan and the band has had a lot of shoes thrown onstage during their 20-year career. I remember when this album came out, the album title created a lot of buzz that it would be their last. Thankfully it wasn’t!
In this song, Fat Mike does one of my favorite NOFX vocal tricks – ending a line with the first part of a word and starting the next line by finishing it. This is a perfect opening track and I really like this album, but it’s hard for me to rank NOFX albums because all of them are good, but they all have their ups and downs.

NOFX – “The Brews”
Yeah, there’s a lot of NOFX on my iPod. It’s understandable considering they’re my third favorite band behind Gatsbys American Dream and Saves The Day. This song is off of NOFX’s most famous album, and the album that really got my friends and I into punk rock in the first place, “Punk In Drublic.” It started with Green Day, which led to Mike buying a Fat Wreck comp, “Survival of the Fattest,” where we found out about a bunch of Fat Wreck bands.
This song always takes me back to junior high. I remember listening to this song like 10 times in a row, jumping around Matt’s bedroom in his old house. The song has a bunch of random Hebrew words in it and I remember always asking this Jewish girl at school what they meant.

Spoon – “Ghost of You Lingers”
I really liked their radio hit, “The Underdog,” but I’ll admit — I haven’t listened to this album much. This song is kind of psychedelic and not as hooky as the single. But they’re a good band and I should check out some of their earlier work.

A Wilhelm Scream – “Anchor End”
One of my favorite bands — these guys are so awesome. I remember interviewing them back in the BW days and they were messing with me and answered every question by somehow talking about monsters. A few years later, Matt and I took a ferry out to Bremerton to see them at some little coffee shop and I brought them a book called The Encyclopedia of Monsters. They’re awesome guys and one of the best live bands you’ll ever see. “All my friends are anchor end” is the chorus in this song and I couldn’t feel the same way. My friends are the best.

The Format – “She Doesn’t Get It”
Ooh, this one is a gem. Actually, everything The Format does is amazing. They have to be the most underrated band on the planet. They’re amazing. Every song is catchy, but not annoying. What I mean is that they’re a band you can listen to over and over and over and it just never gets old. I think every mix CD I’ve ever made for Cheryl has a Format song on it. I wonder when they’re putting out a new CD…

Meg & Dia – “Monster”
Another band that should be bigger than they are, Meg & Dia are sisters from Utah and they have two of the prettiest voices around. Their debut CD is filled with really catchy songs and the voices are a nice complement to the huge guitars and big hooks. They’re another band that makes it onto a lot of CDs I make for Cheryl and I should have gone and seen them when they came through Raleigh a few weeks ago!

Wu-Tang Clan – “The Projects”
The Wu’s sophomore double-disc is easily my favorite hip-hop CD of all time and probably in my top-10 albums of all time. “The Projects” isn’t one of my favorite tracks on disc two, but everything they do is good. Ghostface’s XXX-rated flow at the end of the song kind of comes out of nowhere, but has some good rhymes.

Gatsbys American Dream – “Don’t Think Twice It’s Alright”
Yep, this is a Bob Dylan cover. It’s a rare GAD track from a compilation Doghouse put out called “Paupers, Peasants, Princes & Kings” and I remember how excited Nic was to be asked to be on the album. I’m a big Bob Dylan fan, so it was sweet to hear my favorite band cover one of his songs. I love how strained Nic’s voice sounds on this song — it’s a nice balance to the crisp, synthesized drum track.

Gatsbys American Dream – “We’re Not Orphans”
Apple should program shuffle to never play the same band twice in a row. Not that I’m complaining too much because I love Gatsbys, but still… Anyway, this is the second track on their second album, which happens to be my favorite. I mean, I love all their albums, but “Ribbons and Sugar” just had so much raw energy, when you heard it, you knew you were listening to something special. Gatsbys American Dream is my favorite band and it has nothing to do with Nic being my friend. It’s just the combination of the energy, the passion, the innovation, the musicianship and the message. I have very fond memories from Gatsbys’ shows and I’m still bummed they broke up.

Random thoughts from the VMAs

2008-09-07T20:19:00.000-07:00

John Norris is way too old for MTV. Listening to him greet every band by saying, “What’s up dude? Hey dude! What’s up man? What’s up dude?” was super annoying. Move on, John, you’re like 60…

Christina Aguliera was the hottest chick in the room. Wowzers.

Britney Spears is back, ya’ll! I’m pretty sure MTV rigged the three awards she won to prove that point, but she looked really good and was totally coherent. Good for her!

Did they hold the thing in a high school gym?

I really didn’t think I could love Rihanna any more than I already do, but I thought the opening performance was amazing. She killed it! The zombie theme was awesome — very Thriller of her — and she was actually singing. I love her songs, I love her look, I love everything about her, really.

Russell Brand was awesome too. Those Jonas Brothers jokes had me rolling! He was very entertaining, but let’s get serious…I think I could listen to a British dude reading me the phone book. But I can’t wait until Forgetting Sarah Marshall comes out on DVD because that movie was hilarious.

If the room broke out in a fight-to-the-death brawl, I think Jordin Sparks would be the last one standing. The Seahawks could have used her today.

Travis Barker drumming along with a DJ? HELLS YEAH!

Demi Moore? Really? Ashton must have pulled some strings…

Katy Perry is a bombshell. She needs to star in a Wonder Woman movie, am I right?

I’m not really sure why Lil’ Wayne was even wearing pants, but he was entertaining.

Lindsay Lohan and Britney Spears both seemed sober. If Amy Winehouse comes on, I’m buying a lottery ticket.

Paramore sucked.

Paris Hilton’s My New BFF looks horrendous. But I’ll probably still watch.

I think that’s the first time I’ve ever seen Slash without a cigarette. I bet he was chewing Nicorette. But I love that he laughed when he saw that Linkin Park won. The world will be a better place when that excuse for a band stops making music. (Slipknot too)

I miss my TiVo dearly.

All the outside performances made it look like they were rocking out on Sesame Street.

The “just got out of bed” look works for guys’ hair. For girls? Not so much. Lauren Conrad apparently didn’t get the memo.

Add Tokio Hotel to the list of bands that should just stop. How the hell did they win the best new artist award?

Lupe Fiasco is so fresh. I’m still bummed I didn’t go see the Kanye/Lupe/N.E.R.D/Rihanna tour last year. That said, Kanye’s new song is weak.

Perez!!!

The trade

2008-09-06T22:18:00.000-07:00

This post is dedicated to Anna Marie.

I got...

Stuart Stahl
San Antonio
Sting
Age: 21	B/T: R/R
Born: Hull, MA
Position(s): LF/1B
View Hardball Dynasty Profile

Quinton Snyder
San Antonio
Sting
Age: 22	B/T: L/R
Born: Minford, OH
Position(s): C
View Hardball Dynasty Profile

and

Trent Miller
San Antonio
Sting
Age: 22	B/T: R/R
Born: Pittsburg, KS
Position(s): P (SuA)
View Hardball Dynasty Profile

For...

Jin-Chi Choi
Anaheim
Anteaters
Age: 21	B/T: S/R
Born: Placentia, CA
Position(s): RF/1B/LF/DH
View Hardball Dynasty Profile

I know I gave up the best player in the deal, so it was a hard trade to make. But Stahl and Snyder are no slouches—ranking 8th and 18th, respectively, in last season's NL Prospect Rankings. While both are on the wrong side of the defensive spectrum (Snyder can't really catch and Stahl is a first baseman) with old-player skills, they sure can hit. Snyder is going to max out at about 350 plate appearances because he has durability issues, but he'll still make an impact. Plus, Miller is a quality bullpen arm—something my team sorely lacks. With Brent O'Donnell wrapped up for a few more years, I felt that Choi was expendable and I think I got three Major Leaguers in return.

September 6, 2008

2008-09-06T21:48:00.000-07:00

My day started with a phone call. I jumped out of bed, thinking it might be a manager I'm hoping to talk to for a story I'm working on. I didn't recognize the number and tried to clear my throat before answering, but still sounded like I just woke up. It wasn't the manager though, it was a co-worker that lives nearby. He had a flat tire and wanted to know if I had a tire iron. I actually wasn't sure if I did or not, but I said that I did and told him I would be right over. Thankfully I did indeed have one (I would have felt like an idiot knowing that we drove 3,300 miles with spare tire in the trunk but no tire iron). I got over to his apartment complex and helped him change his tire.

After that, I headed home to change clothes because we agreed to go out for lunch (well, breakfast, but let's call it lunch, since it was already 1 p.m.). The whole reason he even went out to his car is because he said he was craving pancakes. We went to a place called Elmo's Diner downtown and it was fantastic. Now I know why it was voted the best place for breakfast in the Durham visitor's guide Cheryl and I picked up at the North Carolina Welcome Center. Good stuff. After that, I took him to Locopops, since it's only about a block away. I was very excited to see that they added a new flavor to the menu...horchata! My friend laughed at me when I pulled out my half-full stamp card.

After that I just came home and chilled for a while before heading out to the Bulls' playoff game. Last night was rained out, so I expected a huge crowd, since it was 87 degrees and clear at game time. I had a feeling that wouldn't be the case when I found a parking spot on the first level just a half hour before the first pitch. I knew it would be even emptier than I imagined when I was able to score a first-row ticket right behind the visitors' dugout. Sure enough, the place was pretty empty. The official attendance is listed at 2,689 (26% capacity), which means a lot of people missed a good game! After fouling off about 10 pitches, Johnny Gomes yanked a home run down the left field line in the bottom of the first, putting the Bulls up, 2-0. That'd be all they needed, as Jeff Niemann pitched seven no-hit innings, finally giving up a double in the eighth, that eventually came around to score. I was excited to see Danny Ray Herrera come out of the Bats' bullpen. Herrera is only 5-foot-7 — probably the shortest pitcher in professional baseball. He was drafted by the Rangers in the 46th round of the '06 draft, but came to the Reds with Edinson Volquez in the Josh Hamilton deal. My die-hard fans (just me?) will recall that I liked Herrera when he was pitching for New Mexico a few years ago.

A crazy thing happened in the fifth inning—the stadium lights went out! I don't know exactly what happened. It wasn't a power outage, because the scoreboard still worked and there were still lights on in the surrounding buildings and the press box, but all the stadium lights were out. It lasted for about 20 minutes and was pretty fun, actually. The Bulls showed an episode of This Week In Baseball on the JumboTron.

When I got home, I Skyped with Cheryl and then messed around with my fake fantasy team. For those keeping tabs, I did eventually pull off the trade that was mentioned last weekend. But by initially backing out, I was able to get a lot better package out of the other owner, so that felt good. It was a prospect deal though, so we'll see how it turns out...

Now I'm eating cereal out of Tupperware and wearing my last pair of clean undies. Looks like I'll be doing dishes and laundry tomorrow while I watch football. Go Hawks!

My first bike ride

2008-09-05T15:54:00.000-07:00

After work, I decided to brave the elements and head out on my first bike ride. After all, it was just a drizzle and I was really excited about my new bike. So I changed clothes, threw a water bottle into my backpack and headed out the door.

It only took me about 10 seconds to realize that my assumption that this would be an easier way to work out was horribly misguided. It is just as difficult, if not more difficult, it's just conveniently packed into a shorter time span. My lungs were burning, my thighs felt like Jell-O (and slammed into my gut on each turn of the pedals), I was sweating in places I didn't know were possible and my bruised taint was screaming at me to get a more comfortable seat.

I did go down the trail I found and that was awesome. It's surrounded by woods on both sides, which makes it very peaceful and I loved the smell of wet moss and the sounds of chirping locusts. I didn't see anyone else on my trek, meaning I was the only person ~~lonely~~ ~~stupid~~ committed enough to working out on a Friday night in the rain.

The loop ended up being about 2.5 miles. Now I'm going to take a shower, throw on some sweats and hope I can stay awake long enough to watch Brandon Morrow's first MLB start at 10 p.m.

I got a bike!

2008-09-04T19:30:00.001-07:00

Ever since I've been out here (actually even before I came out here), I've been looking for a bike. Working out has to be fun and riding a bike seemed like the most enjoyable option to me. Perhaps it's because I have such fond memories of riding bikes with my friends growing up. Anyway, I found a full suspension mountain bike on craigslist for only $65. I was thrilled when I called the guy and it was still available and he was even nice enough to personally deliver it to my house! Craigslist comes through again! I'm not going to ride to work until I get a helmet and a bike lock, but I'm excited to go for a ride after work — maybe I'll even head up to that trail I found the other day! Here's my new ride...

10 Reasons I Want To Lose Weight

2008-09-03T18:28:00.000-07:00

1) Health, obviously.

2) My 10-year reunion is coming up and I want to look good.

3) I'm going to Hawaii in June (yay!) and I want to be comfortably shirtless as much as possible.

4) Horia. I know, it sounds kinda gay — but pretty much every time I see Horia, I think, "Damn, those are cool clothes. I wish I could fit into clothes like that and look that awesome." Which leads me to...

5) H&M. There's one in Southcenter Mall now and I can't wait to check it out.

6) Another store called Zebraclub. There's one in Bell. Square and it's like walking past a bunch of Horia-like mannequins.

7) I'll have more energy to play with my nieces and nephews.

8) Megan probably won't make fun of me as much!

9) Sometimes I have to turn sideways when going through turnstiles. That's embarrassing.

10) I'll save money on gas!

September 2, 2008

2008-09-02T22:06:00.000-07:00

I'm up late for a guy that "ran" two miles today! The truth is, I'm waiting for my dad to call. He's in Seattle in the middle of a fantasy football auction draft for our team and I want to see who we came away with. We already got to keep Adrian Peterson, Reggie Wayne, Jay Cutler and Wes Welker, and I know he got Steven Jackson — so I know we're in good shape, I just want to see how the rest of the roster turned out.

Anyway, it was another great day at the office. Since another intern left on Friday, I did two Daily Dishes this morning (here and here). I also did a post on the business blog (here) and continued to work on some data entry stuff. Also, I wrote most of the recaps at the top of the lists here. I found out that tomorrow I'll be covering the playoffs throughout the minor leagues. I'm not quite sure what that entails/how we're covering it, but I'm excited to find out in the morning. I also found out today that I get two weeks off for Christmas, which is amazing. The two weeks align perfectly with Cheryl's break too, so that's even better! Oh yeah, and I joined a fantasy football league with some of the guys at work. So, it was an all-around awesome day!

After the run, I cooked some dinner (a little spaghetti and a lot of salad), chatted with Cheryl, surfed the Web and played some Madden. During my Web browsing, I came across two things that got me really excited.

1) I can't wait for this to be released for Mac.
2) I can't wait for this to be released in theaters (NSFW).

My first run

2008-09-02T17:08:00.001-07:00

Well, I just got back from my first "run." I use the term loosely because it was more of a walk or a panting stumble. I knew I was in trouble when I was out of breath from bending over to tie my shoes and do a little stretching. But, that's why I'm doing it in the first place! I'd say I did 25 percent running, 75 percent walking. But hey, like I said yesterday, it's a start. I planned a route using Google Maps and I ended up going about 2 miles, which took me about 40 minutes. I'm not going to increase the route until I can run the whole thing. If you're a surveyor (or you're just curious) and you want to see a map of my run, here it is...

A is my house, so I went down to B and back. There's actually an awesome trail right alongside Fayetteville. Hopefully someday I'll have the stamina to do some sort of loop so I can run on that trail. During the first half of the run, I thought it was pure hell. But now that I'm home and showered, it doesn't seem that bad. Thank goodness for my iPod and dri-fit spandex (that I wore UNDER my shorts. Don't worry, Cheryl, I'm not running around Durham in spandex and tie-dye!)

Here are a few things I thought of during the run...
• According to this, I burned 666 calories. I knew the devil was involved somehow!
• Thank God no one knows who I am or where I live because it's insane how sweaty I was so close to my house.
• I think I need a training bra.
• Even though it was 7 p.m., it was still 75 degrees out! If a gallon of milk weighs eight pounds, I think I lost two or three in sweat, spit and snot. No tears or blood though — maybe next time!

MLB At-Bat Update

2008-09-01T20:35:00.000-07:00

MLB At-Bat released an update today that is downright amazing. Remember how I mentioned that it was odd they didn't have box scores? Well, apparently I wasn't the only one that thought that was odd and they fixed it with their v1.2 update. Actually, they went above-and-beyond the call of duty on this one. Now, the app has Gameday, so there's pitch-by-pitch information, box scores, player cards with up-to-date season stats and summaries of every game. WOW!

September 1, 2008

2008-09-01T19:05:00.000-07:00

I had an awesome dream last night. Ever seen that YouTube video where Travis Barker is drumming along to that Apple Bottom Jeans song? If not, check it out. Anyway, I had a dream that I could drum along to that song. I felt so cool! But then I woke up. Haha! I woke up at about 9:30, showered, grabbed a Slim Fast and headed out the door, on my way to the last Greensboro Grasshoppers game of the season. It only took about 45 minutes to drive to Greensboro and I found a free parking spot. It was a beautiful day and I got a seat right behind home plate. Like I said, I was bummed that I didn't go to last night's game, as Mike Stanton and Matt Dominguez each hit two home runs. But Stanton made me feel a little bit better when he crushed a 3-2 curveball out of the stadium in the third inning. It was his 39th home run of the season, so the power's obviously legit. He also drew three walks and was intentionally walked once, making him 1-for-1 with 4 walks on the day. Although I didn't see any myself, the strikeouts have to be a concern. On the season, he whiffed 153 times in just 125 games. Is he the new Brandon Wood?

The Grasshoppers have a beautiful stadium. It's funny going to low-A parks that are 10 times nicer than Cheney Stadium in Tacoma. On top of that, there were some other quirks that made the whole experience very enjoyable. First off, there were $1 hot dogs, sodas and beers. I'm not sure if that is a regular Monday thing or an end-of-the-season thing, but I had a couple hot dogs. They also play Bubb Rubb's "woo woo" over the loudspeaker and the whole crowd does a "woo woo" in return. At first I thought it was really cool, but it got kind of annoying late in the game after I had heard it about 100 times. No joke — it felt like I was living with Chris Miller again! They also videotape the relief pitcher running in and then replay it in slow motion with the Baywatch theme music, which was really funny. But the best part was in the bottom of the third and seventh innings when Babe the Bat Dog retrieved bats after players hit the ball. I'm not making this up! There's a black lab (named Babe) that sits behind a fence with her trainer. As soon as a Greensboro player gets a hit, Babe runs out and gets the bat. It was the cutest thing I've ever seen at the ballpark. Here's a perfect video because it shows Babe getting a bat and you can hear a Woo Woo!

After that, I headed home. But I made a pit stop at Target in Burlington because I wanted to buy a scale. I've decided that waiting to get a bike to workout is just an excuse. I'm sick and tired of being overweight and I'm going to do something about it. Why not? I have so much free time out here, I might as well do something productive with it. What's more important — being good at Madden or living to see my grandchildren? So, I've set a goal for myself and I'm going to use this blog as accountability. The goal is to lose 50 pounds by the time the internship is over. That's 10 pounds a month, which I think is doable. I'm already starting to eat better, now I just have to add exercise to the mix. After work every day I'm going to go for a walk or a jog (or hopefully soon, a bike ride). Right now I'm 260 pounds, but by the end of January, I will be no more than 210. Heck, that's still overweight, but it's a start!

I got home, cooked some chicken (and didn't almost burn down my kitchen this time!) for a chicken salad, ate dinner, straightened up my room, did the dishes, took out the trash, shaved and now I'm about to Skype with Cheryl and go to bed. First day of working out begins tomorrow ... I need some sleep!

August 31, 2008

2008-08-31T19:51:00.000-07:00

Another low-key day, which was nice. I woke up at 1 again, took a shower and then checked my e-mail, where I found out that the guy I e-mailed on Craigslist about a bike wanted me to come by his house between 8 and 10 a.m. Needless to say, I didn't get any of the seven bikes he had for sale. Early bird gets the worm, I guess...
After that, I went grocery shopping and stocked up on more food I can make (and a strainer). I got a lot of fruits and veggies, as I'm trying to eat healthier. I also got some more tuna for sandwiches and some other lunch meat, I got some Slim Fast shakes for breakfast, some more Golden Grahams, stuff to make tacos and I got something interesting that I'm going to have for dinner sometime this week. It's something I've always wanted to try and I'm not sure this is the best way to try it, but whatev. Any guesses? Give up? Matzo ball soup! I'll give my goyum review of it later this week.

After shopping, I basically just sat around my room. I'm odd in that I have ADD, but I'm also really lazy, so I spent the day constantly switching between activities that can be done while sitting down. I found Project Runway reruns on YouTube and started to get caught up with the episodes I missed while in Birch Bay/on the road/out here, played some Madden and surfed the 'net. I really need a bike!

Looking at the box score of the Greensboro Grasshoppers game makes me pissed I didn't go tonight. Both players I'm excited to see (Mike Stanton and Matt Dominguez) each hit two home runs and the Grasshoppers won it in the bottom of the ninth! Ouch. I'm going tomorrow though for the last game of the season. It's about an hour drive out there, so I'll have to get up waaaay earlier than I have been, since the game starts at 12:35!

I just thought of something funny...

2008-08-30T22:54:00.001-07:00

My thumbnails are the only buff part of my body!

August 30, 2008

2008-08-30T21:11:00.000-07:00

I had a pretty low-key day. Woke up at 1 (who's jealous?), drove down to State Employees Credit Union to try and deposit my rent into Dickran's account, but they're only open Monday through Friday. So I got a coffee and headed home where I just chilled, played with my phone (beat the Cannon Game), played some Madden and surfed the internet (did some blogging, scroll down!). I almost made a huge trade in my fake fantasy baseball league, but couldn't pull the trigger. I know...it's absolutely thrilling to read about trades I ALMOST MADE in my FAKE FANTASY LEAGUE. Haha!

At 7, I went to the mall to go see Pineapple Express. It was really funny — better than I expected. The couple sitting next to me were blazed out of their mind, which I guess is to be expected in a movie like that, but it was really annoying because the girl talked through the whole movie. If that wasn't bad enough, her voice sounded like Fran Drescher.

After the movie I walked around the mall a little bit and got suckered into a sales spiel by a woman at the Seacret booth. Before I knew it, she was filing my nails and trying to sell me a kit for Cheryl and Mom. By simply rubbing three different sides of this little spongy rectangular file on my thumb nails, she buffed up and made them super shiny in about 10 seconds. Honestly, they look pretty cool and I was almost persuaded, but the whole thing just seemed like a scam. Pushy sales people creep me out.

Now I'm back home, admiring my shiny nails and watching UW vs. Oregon (which I can't believe is on TV here). Jake Locker played baseball this summer in the West Coast Collegiate Baseball League and my editor said he talked to scouts who believe his future is in baseball. Hard to disagree after watching a few absolutely pathetic possessions.

I was going to get an oil change this weekend, but the place I've decided to go to (based on a discount from my Durham Bulls ticket stub) is only open until 1 on Saturdays, which obviously didn't fit into my schedule this weekend. Tomorrow I'm going to go grocery shopping and try to find a bike on craigslist, but that's about it. I'm sure there will be more Madden and videos on Break.com. It's pretty lonely, especially with my roommate gone this weekend, so it's weird that, in a way, weekdays are better than weekends. That's when you really know your job is awesome! But, I need to start planning more weekend field trips because sitting around in my room for 16 hours is going to get old really fast — no matter how much I love video games, TV and the internet! I might head out to Greensboro tomorrow night for a Grasshoppers game. Then down the road, I'll shoot for visiting the Harbaughs, the North Carolina Baseball Museum, the Duke Hall of Fame, a Duke football game, walking around Chapel Hill, etc...