Productive Thursday

Cleared the cobwebs out of my morning lounge-about routine to shower early and head down to ASU for my big fat campus visit. This amounted to meeting with Dr. Robert again, meeting his grad student Jenny and a handful of other professors who are involved with the program. Good times - and further confirmation that with my scores, skills, writing ability, etc., I should be a lock for acceptance and funding. Phew! So it made for a solid morning / afternoon, and I got a vanilla chai tea out of it as a bonus. Still need to put a final layer of polish on my Underworld monster which, surprise surprise, pretty much no one has read or commented on (with the exception of Beck, who by day is a veterinarian but by night is... a editing person. Not the best superhero power, eh?). Then a few clicks, a submit, and it should be on to the world of academia in 2008.

Came back and tutored for a couple of hours and gave a pretty decent pep talk to a student of mine who is taking the ACT this Saturday - it was pretty much in the realm of "everything is fine, even if you don't do well you are still fine," trying to get her to be even keeled for the test as her biggest weakness is getting frantic and rushing and making silly mistakes. So hopefully that will work out. I powered out of there at 6 to drive down to Mesa for some competitive men's league action, only when I got out of the car - AGH. I lifted heavy weights on Wednesday (heavy for me, anyways), and for whatever reason all kinds of soreness kicked in right as I got ready to play. I felt pretty terrible, just had a really tough time getting loose, but I powered through and played respectably. Fortunately, our team remains ridiculous - we won both game 15-7, actually clinching a spot in the league championship by virtue of our 4-0 record. So we have the age-old debate of "do we play for the perfect season or do we sit our starters?" or "do we not show up for games 5 and 6 as a funny joke?" Things are really just going as predicted, which is less than awesome as it indicates that we can only go down from here. (In other Ultimate news, I got invited to play for a team at New Year's Fest, the local tourney, so expect a "wow, I am not in tournament shape" sometime in late January).

Back at the homefront, things are good. Beck has taken to drinking some smoothies that I affectionately term her "Shrek Drink" because, well, that's pretty much the kind of lager you would expect an animated ogre to imbibe:

Yikes. But she likes its tasty and mutation-inducing properties, so that's groovy. Dogs are also good, though today they are suffering a rare Arizona rainstorm and moping about accordingly. Beck snapped these pics of an exhausted Wrigley and an extreme close-up Sparkle the other day:

AND I've done a little internet-surfing and turned my computer into a Guitar Hero station for Beck's and my (note proper construction of possessive) entertainment. The program is called "Frets on Fire" and I've outfitted it with all of the GH 1, 2 and 3 songs. So if you're up for rockin' out low-budget style, we are your people. Of the program does not use a toy guitar but just USES YOUR KEYBOARD!!! Here's a screen shot and a pic of me in full on, left-handed upside down keyboard rockin' form (and I realize it's not left-handed, but I just thought I would Jimi the phrase a little):

Nerdy enough for you? The more apt question is "why don't you just take three steps to your left and play a real guitar?" I will, mister, I will. Ah - for those about to rock, I salute me.