Flying Spa-Nyet-ti Monster / Beckless Life

*Great* pic snapped by fellow VOTSer Quan Nguyen at yesterday's charity hat tournament. And yes, I got the D. Wahoo!

Beck has been hiking in the Grand Canyon since Thursday - she's doing a veterinary relief effort trip for the Havasupai - so I've been all on my lonesome. Most of it has been spent taking a break to regather myself and get ready to reload for the Summer Sessions (and, in case you haven't noticed, catching up on blogging). I've caught some Stanley Cup Playoffs (I'm 0 for 2, as both the Sharks and the Habs look on their ways out), NBA playoffs (1 for 2, as it sadly looks like we're headed for another Lakers-Celtics Finals), MLB (don't even ask), and grabbed a movie in there, too (a re-viewing of the Coens' No Country for Old Men - I managed to find a good account of that ending, iyi). Pretty low key stuff, mixed with workouts and dog walks. Nice to relax for a bit before I plunge back in on Monday.

Beck is, you may have guessed, far more creative of a chef than I, but I've made do in her absence. A burrito bowl* on Thursday, turkey cheeseburger casserole** on Friday, and MoJo*** on Saturday. VICTORY. It's also worth noting that Beck is one hundred percent incommunicado - seems 3G doesn't cover the floor of the Canyon - and Friday was probably the first day that we hadn't communicated in any form since she went on her NOLS trip in what, 1998? I eagerly await her return...

* - Ground turkey w/ adobo, refried beans, cheddar cheese, taco sauce = mmmm. Accompanied by a big serving of broccoli w/ bbq sauce.

** - Ground turkey w/ mixed-in egg whites, chopped provolone cheese, and a mix of bbq sauce and ketchup = mmmm. Also accompanied by a big serving of salt & peppered broccoli.

*** - Ground turkey w/ ... just kidding. I took home a leftover slice of the lunchtime pizza (see below). So technically my dinner was a slice of NY style cheese pizza from Venezia's, but that was at 4 pm. After the nighttime tourney until 10 pm, though (again, see below), I fulfilled my day-long daydream of rushing back home from Avondale to get to MoJo before closing (I made it with 20 minutes to spare) and had a Beck-esque froyo in her honor - plain and vanilla yogurt w/ strawberries, fruity pebbles, a smattering of m & m's, granola, and pralines. And if you thought Mexican food after multiple hours of frisbee was tasty, tasty, let me tell you that concoction was friggin' transcendent. With the added bonus that I hung out at the fru-fru Biltmore Mall in my post Ulty state of disgustingness. Take that, beautiful people!

Yesterday was my first long, brutal day of disc in a while. True enough that we played all day, sorta, at Daweena, but that was w/ 19 people, and I only played O points. Yesterday was two games of SLUG frisbee with maybe 18, 19 people total (only two subs per side, and I really didn't take but one or two points off) for a total of three hours followed by four hours of essentially no-sub Ultimate at Kelly's night time charity hat tourney. The former was a bit of a mess; it was tough to balance teams because people showed up and were leaving early, and my side (and "my side" is randomly determined, mind you) ended up with an advantage, particularly at the end. We won 13-8 / 13-9 or so, but didn't really feel great about it as Dheintime in particular clearly got a little frustrated with the balance of powers. Still, free lunch is free lunch, and I committed only a single stall 9 turnover en route to my 8th SLUG win of 2010 (that's 8-0 for those of you, etc.). I also ran a ton of cup and cut a whole lot, which is worth noting because I still had another tournament in front of me. Anyhoo, my winning streak and the balanced teams issue are enough to inspire me to let someone else pick the teams next week (though in my defense, I did that last week - Ebay picked 'em - and I still won. So maybe I'm just on a good streak of late, so baby baby doesn't need to come back maybe next week).

Grabbed some pizza with les boys and then came home to watch the Habs lose at home. I played with the dogs for a bit, ate a little, then re-donned the armor and drove west to go at it again. Kelly Smith (of Mark of Zorro fame) took some big initiative and hosted a tourney for Arizonans for the Protection of Exploited Children and Adults (APECA) - $10 got you a t-shirt and four hours of night time Ultimate, and it was very worth it (and for a good cause, taboot). For whatever reason, it drew a lot of inexperienced players - there were maybe 15 experienced people out of the 40+ there. So it was set up to be a purely good times, teach new people how to play tourney, and it surely was - a good chance to run around (A LOT) and air it out. For some reason (I suspect there was sandbagging going on in the self-rating process), one of the teams ended up with Ebay, Big Nate, Tricky, and Rob Norbeck, while my team ended up with Ted and me and a lot of two or three pickup games of lifetime experience players. So we were not favorites by any stretch, which gave us all the more reason just to let it fly and try to show people the ropes.

I'll eschew a detailed account of a hat tournament, other than to say that I had two legit greatests for goals: one was a very controlled jump out the back of the endzone, flip it to Ted (and I knew right where he was, so this was something of an anticlimactic greatest), and the other was a high degree of difficulty full speed sprint, layout out of bounds and flip a nice floaty shot to the middle of the endzone for someone to run down. Very nice! I also just ran and ran and ran all three games, up to and including the very last one where I felt about as fresh and fast as I did all day and managed to dominate a little bit. At a hat tourney, but still. So that was a good feeling - I had set out to test the knee, and it not only held up, but propelled me to some layout grabs, skies, and high energy good play (for posterity, that all happened against Seth and Ary et al.). Our game against the aforementioned stacked team was a blast, too, as we managed to give them a good game despite the odds being decidedly not in our favor. And the first game we played was against a bunch of Air Force guys who have been using Ultimate as their cardio training - they didn't entirely know what they were doing, but they caught well and ran really hard and seemed to have a great time.

So yeah, great, athletic day for Saturday, and I am going to take today off to recover - I unsurprisingly feel pretty banged up, though it's more just general soreness from doing that for the first time in a long while than any injury; my knees feel pretty darned good. The worst part is actually my toes - my new, negative fifteen dollar cleats were very comfortable but not quite broken in, so I have a slew of blood blisters. Yeck. I imagine I'll survive.

Alright, it's Cubbies time. Here's hoping Beck's doing well and gets back home soon; the casa de flores is oh So Lonely without her. "Just take a seat / they're always free..."

Oh, and sure, here are some more tourney pics of your narrator for your enjoyment, courtesy of Stephen So and Quan:

The Aftermath / The State of Nyet

As mentioned, the hits just keep on coming. Beck had Thursday off, so after returning the mountain of papers that Jenny and I graded (in SA / Austin and over the past week) to the class that afternoon, I met her at SMOCA so she, too, could enjoy the Close portraits and the design-in-music exhibit. This was the day after the Jon Spencer Knee Explosion, so I couldn't really walk around the museum very well, but I enjoyed the second time just as much as the first. Home for some delicious (and light) codfish and broccoli dinner, and we got ready to get back to the grind on Friday.

Elaine (Beck's 5th year college roomie) and her new husband Jamie met us with D/C at the Biltmore's showing of Dr. No, the original James Bond movie. Interesting to see both what passed for special effects and good dialog back in 1962 (not to mention the exquisite old school sexism). Enjoyable enough, especially over Red Devil and followed by a stupidly colossal MoJo chocolate mocha mint concoction. After another working day, we met the same crew (plus E/J's friends Mike and Anna) at Barrio Cafe, a neighborhood fancy Mexican place that we've been meaning to try since we got here. Good if stupidly expensive, Barrio at least gave us a good environment to wait an hour-plus to be seated and enjoy some quality grub. The plan is to have Elaine and Jamie over for burgers tonight, too.

And lest you think that the train of family / friends is over, co-captain Genevieve is going to be in town this coming weekend. Yay! We're headed down to Tucson to play in Uoma Donna, a fun co-ed Ulty tourney that includes general silliness as well as good Ultimate (as well as a "two point for cross-gender hucks from behind the half field line" rule, which always makes for hilarity). Getting Genevieve to fly in and forming a siiiiick team has been a plan in the works for a few months now, so my general level of pissedness at potentially driving down and sitting on the sidelines is extraordinary. I've probably ranted about it enough, but the timing of this sucks, and it supersucks that after all the disciplined eating at working out and general effort at preventing this from happening, here I am again with a busted knee from trying to be a club Ultimate player. I'll spare you more because I'd hate for this to become VhinBallad - you know, whatevs. I'll have fun with G et al - my plan is to rest / ice and try to get the swelling down by Wednesday, see how it takes to a league game, and then evaluate whether I think it'll stand up to a full weekend after that. I'm going to try to make a doc's appt. in there, too, because as my dad points out, knee effusion is decidedly un-normal (even though I think I've got subclinical effusion *all-the-time*, so this may just really be a flare-up-plus). I'm trying to stay upbeat about it, but the usual frustration is settling in nicely today. D'oh.

Otherwise, I am suffering the rush of the late semester. Not worth going into details, but there's enough work to do that I should probably stop blogging now. Actually, it's not terrible; just a couple big assignments and all the TAing left to be done, and hopefulyl I'll pull it off. I'm not going to worry.

Alright, to that end, here we go. This post feels boring; sorry for that. Time to grab some food and get back to work. Here we go (incidentally, Alex O. pressed all game long and didn't score. Ah, well).

Sunday Morning / What if Bobby didn't fly?

Taking a break from school reading to sip on an iced coffee (from, appropriately enough, DD) and catch a Bruins / Caps game. Alexander Ovechkin has 50 goals and just got caught by Steven Stamkos, a 20 year old from the Tampa Bay Lightning (he's incidentally one of the three youngest players to hit that mark, beaten by only Jimmy Carson and some dude named Gretzky). So this should be an exciting afternoon as they try to get #8 the Rocket Richard Award. I'll spend it with legs propped up and iced.

But really why I'm posting is this, a cool little commercial for the upcoming Stanley Cup playoffs that just played. Enjoy:

3BK-5 / March Tourism

Make that 3BK-5. Sunday's / this morning's rainfall canceled what would have been a cold and muddy affair against the likes of Griesy and Big Nate. Probably for the better, as Beck and I don't entirely feel up to it, Stefan's still injured, blah blah etc. Besides, I may have wasted all my Dawn-Plus Now With Gries-Fighting Action while finally taking free pizza from his pockets on Saturday. Huzzah*!!! Plus the iPFam has descended upon our abode (!!!), so we have more fun out-hanging to do. It would have stunk to once again make them watch a freezing cold Ultimate game, so hopefully the weather will turn better before next week.

* - Yep, I won my third SLUG scrimmage in a row (3-0 in '10, 7-4 all time) while Griesy lost for the first time in something like 8 or 9 games. Ah, well, all things must pass. Here's an action shot of Griesy in case you don't know to whom I am referring:

Yep, the iPFam is here in full force for their spring vacation - they'll be here for the next few weeks, the Nyetfam is joining us Saturday, Mike NTPB is coming in on Monday - it's the usual March madness here in Sunny Azz. I spent the bulk of the weekend wiping up actual grease, getting the house cleaned and the lawn mowed and all that in anticipation. The study, believe it or not, looks livable, and the various surfaces were dust free at least for a few hours there. Good times.

Beck and I had a great weekend - her last day at work for a week was on Friday, so we time-traveled back to 1950 and hit up the diner around the corner called, appropriately enough, Linda's on Osbourne. Why time-travel, you ask? Well, the 1950s was our best guess as when the decor in the restaurant was established, and there is little doubt that it has gone unchanged since. It's also "the best school lunch you've ever had" fare, with most everything coming straight out of the fat fryer or off the grill with copious butter and or gravy. Not that there's anything wrong with that. It also didn't help that our fellow diners espoused values like "Santa Fe, Mexico, whatever, they're all the same" and, "She ordered San Pellegrino - what a princess!" And reeked of stale cigarettes. After a tasty if bland split meal of fried catfish and country fried steak (when in Rome...), we stepped back into 2010 and grabbed more free Froyo from yours and my favorite place of OMG all time MoJo. Good times! Came home and Beck packed up for her big Saturday trip.

Which was a 12 mile hike in the Superstition Mountains up to Flat-Iron. Beck found a group of fairly die-hard hikers and had been training to made the big trek; she got up at 4:30 (and so did Fred, which means so did I) to leave at 5 to head east out of town. Here's the hike iconic shot:


(Flat Iron is that peak to the far right in the pic). Big, big trip; I spent the morning winning SLUG as referenced, ate lunch, came home and mowed the lawn, and Beck *still* didn't show up for another couple of hours. Intense! She had some quad cramps that hindered her a bit - maybe not a big enough breakfast - and felt like to die at least a couple of times, but required no air rescue and completed the big time hike. Yeah! This resulted in a phone call at 4:45 demanding burgers and / or pizza to replace the lost salt; I decided that my free lunch be damned, we were doing pizza for the potassium benefits, and hit Slice of Sicily for another delicious meal. Beck was fairly conked out during the evening (though she did rally to break our normal rule and hit MoJo for a second time of the weekend. I, incidentally, tried fruit FroYo for the first time - my normal go-tos are chocolate and mint or chocolate and peanut butter concoctions - and I may be a changed human. Seriously, plain yogurt plus Acai (sp?) yogurt plus strawberry shortcake yogurt plus some dark chocolate chips was quite the flavortastic experience), so I spent time cleaning the study - the before / after shots would have been dramatic - until I could watch SNL, which was solid.

I woke up CRAZY early - 4:30 again on Sunday - for unknown though possibly Fred-related reasons, and decided that as long as I was up I would finish the study. So I did, and hung out with Fred / read to start my lazy Sunday. Beck woke up feeling much less sore, so we trekked over to Lola's for our first relaxing Sunday coffee and NYT XWord in a while. Despite the inclusion of "Flow Whistle" as an answer, we did quite well, thanks. Came home to watch an exciting Blackhawks - Red Wings game, do some more reading, and then put the finishing touches on the casa as we waited for the iPFam to arrive. (It poured on and off all day, killing Sunday pickup as well as tonight's game, so I don't really know how I'm going to get my Ultimate fix in the next few days. Ugh). Ate some cheeseburgers / fried potatoes for dinner (Beck still needed to complete the previous day's craving) once they arrived and had a a good time catching up. I was pretty zonked, though, as the consecutive early-risings caught up with me at about 10 and I went into zombie mode. Didn't feel great upon waking up and decided to stay home rather than brave the halls of academia (though I ended up getting a fair amount of work done here anyways).

So far, so good - Fred allegedly did not keep the iPJ and iPMM up, which is a minor miracle, given that she did manage to wake me up at 6 from across the house. It continues to drizzle and be miserable here - very wet and 50 degrees at most today, which is 35 in real degrees according to science. The game cancellation was surprisingly welcome, as referenced. We've been eating some hot food, drinking teas and coffees, and we'll probably grab some dinner out and possibly a movie tonight. I have to get up at 5 tomorrow for some PT and office hours and a full day of the usual - it's not my vacation until next week, when I'll have a pile of midterms to grade, too. Yeehe! In the meantime, fun times, good to see the iPFam, and I'm sure we'll have tales of craziness before the week is out. Though no Ultimate frisbee craziness, a state of affairs I'm not sure I'll be able to handle...

3BK-4 : Weekend : 7/8ths of a Nyet

What a friggin' waste of time. Tonight we played Nappi's team "I'm With Coco," a team that had previously been undefeated. But when their top three draft picks didn't show up, the rest of their roster couldn't even begin to pick up the slack. We completely played down to their level and still won 15-3. It's not even worth recounting; sloppy play on both sides, dropped passes, missed hammers, idiotic rushed throws... but the other team was so outgunned that it didn't matter. So we're 3-1, +19, and 3-0, +27 by my dad's rules that we only count games in which the Beck and I are present. (Beck sat out tonight's game in an effort to heal up her hamstring so she can go hiking this weekend, so maybe we're just 2-0, +15. I seriously doubt it's worth keeping track of these auxiliary figures).

I felt okay tonight - left knee didn't bother me too much. I did get really tired, though, for unknown reasons - I may be getting a tad out of shape because of all the not-running I've been doing lately to try to get my joints back in gear. And I may not have eaten enough today (see below).

This weekend was great - I got a lot of work done, but in between all the reading and writing, lotsa fun stuff. Beck and I went to movie and a dinner and a Froyo on Friday (Shutter Island, Tuck Shop, and MoJo - free MoJo* - respectively). I won a free pizza lunch at Sprawl SLUG on Saturday, and later Beck and I had breakfast for dinner (matzah brie, pancakes and bacon, YUM). I met Tuftsbuds Josh and Nicole who were swinging through town with a long layover on a flight from Montana to New York (yes, through PHX) and grabbed brunch at Acacia Cafe, and after that PM watched the gold medal hockey game which was thrilling even if it didn't have the best result. So GOOD TIMES, and the grind back at school this week has been all the more tolerable for it.

* - We go to MoJo a lot, so when I ran into a dude offering free MoJo coupons (value - $12) in exchange for donations to a cause ($5), I didn't blink - this was just a sound investment, as we basically go to MoJo once a week like good little crack addicts. The donation aspect was just gravy on a deal that was clearly worth it. Beck questioned whether I had just made a donation to e.g. Hitler Youth, but I looked it up, and the charity donations were made to the Special Olympics which, last time I checked, does not overlap very much with the neo-Nazi ethos. So I think we're in the clear. AND because I made a five dollar donation for two free yogurt coupons plus two buy one get one free coupons, AND I did it again yesterday, we're effectively getting 12 yogurts for the price of four + $10, or $72 worth of yogurt for $34, which is probably still HELLA OVERPRICED. But it is so good.

So, MoJo aside, I have been trying to keep my calories down since about a week before the end of January and have upped my calorie expenditure as much as reasonable. I was ~200 lbs. at some point last August when I was injured and not playing disc, but even in January I was probably around 188 or so. Long story short, I weighed 173 after physical therapy yesterday, and granted that was after a pretty intense workout and some sweating, but it wasn't *that* much sweating. I feel pretty good, look thin (I think), and it seems to be helping my knees to some extent. So yay! The goal is roughly the 165-170 range, which was about my real playing weight in high school football. And don't worry, I am taking vitamins and lifting weights and generally being smart about not starving myself or anything - the general deal is that I limit calories to 600 or so between breakfast and lunch, then eat something substantial for dinner around 1000 calories or so, and skip snacking during the day (or limit it to 100 calorie doses). This keeps me in the 1600-1800 range on a daily basis, and theoretically I burn through somewhere in the 2400-2800 range each day by just breathing (based on my height, weight, age and general fitness). So add in some Ultimate workouts and quite a bit of time on the bike / elliptical, and that was a pretty big deficit over the course of February. So YAY, I suppose, and hopefully this will help out in the wear and tear department. It remains to be seen whether I will be able to keep up the act when the iP and Nyetfams come to town, but I'll do my best.

Anyways, it may have caught up with me today, as I didn't eat a substantial enough dinner and felt very low energy at Ultimate tonight. It clearly did not matter at all, as our opponents did not entirely show up. But mental note - I am well enough on my way on the weight front, I need to eat a damn clif bar or something before playing. Ugh.

Alright, speaking of, I need to go stretch and ice and get to bed so I can go to the gym before school tomorrow*. Wish me luck - I am pretty excited that i have been able to have a definite goal in mind (lose weight for Ultimate purposes) and it's seemed to motivate me enough to get 'er done. Per usual, not slipping into the "just eat whatever" habits will be key. I have been counting calories, hopefully not in an obsessive way, and it definitely keeps me honest.

* - I am really, really tired, and if anyone wants to convince me that playing frisbee til 10 at night and then going to the gym the next morning at 6 may be a bad idea, I am all ears.

Fear Not; Like Portal...

"I'm still alive." It'd be a helluvalot better if I were like Love & Rockets and "So Alive," but we'll take what we can get these days.

Spent last Wednesday through Friday in Seattle, doing a little bit of an anthropologist job with a research group in Bioethics at UW. Interesting "conference" of sorts (more like an extended lab meeting) - they were coordinating a grant-approved project on genomics, translation and health disparities, but trying to frame it using discourse analysis, a methodology developed by ASU grad (and communications PhD) Marianne DeGreco. My job was basically to get a grasp of the research going on (to some extent in fly-on-the-wall mode) and see if the methodology being employed would be of use to, say, me, and student-colleagues like me. Discourse analysis is essentially a qualitative method for tracking sometimes literal conversations but also "cultural dialogs;" the idea is to have a rigorous way of tracking ideas across people, locales, popular culture, within academic/political/whatever domains, etc. I'm not entirely convinced that the methodology will prove to be useful for me*, but it was certainly a fun week to spend hanging out with a bunch of very anthropologically and post-structurally-oriented academicians who are all kinds of successful.

* - The main problem, as I see it, is that I'm interested in popular cultural narratives, but if I want to be able to declare something to be something of a dominant narrative, I need some methodology for picking, say, text A over text B. The responses I got were largely of the "as long as you can justify it" variety, but given that I'm interested in having a rigorous take on exactly what counts as "justified," that advice was not entirely helpful. Oh, well.

Otherwise, it's just the usual school deluge that's keeping me off the streets / interwebs. I graded ~80 essays from the intro bioethics course over the weekend; they were largely not good, though I just calculated my average grade, and it was 78. And I've been doing a lot of reading. I'm still terrible at balancing school / TA / research work, but I'm certainly being kept busy. We've also been having candidates visit every week in February for a new bioethicist position in our department, each of whom has grabbed at minimum five hours out of our schedules (between lunch meeting, lab meetings, job talks, etc.). It's been an interesting experience - nothing like seeing a job talk bomb to motivate you away from the "what not to do" direction - but the missing time adds up quickly, as your grading time replaces your reading for class time, your reading for class time replaces your research reading time, and your pleasure reading gets shot to hell. Anyways, things were particularly busy the last week, which is why the Ballad rested.

My left knee is still bugging me, and I've been going to PT on a weekly basis for it, plus doing exercises constantly and getting a little more serious about my weight-lifting regimen. And doing a lot more non-Ultimate exercising lately, generally. I'm down to 179 as of this morning's weigh-in (WOOHOO!), though it's hard to tell how much of that is water-weight, blah blah blah etc. None of it is helping out with the knee thus far - I played Sprawl SLUG this weekend (AND WON!), and my jumping was still incredibly suspect (though I was able to cut pretty decently on O, and my D is still lagging). Anyways, the goal is still to get down to 170 by tryout time (May), which allows me to eat light but not drive myself insane by depriving myself all the time (note that MoJo is still in my diet). I think it's doable, and in combo with weight-lifting / ab-work, should leave me as a rather more-in-shape Sprawl captain. We'll see...

Have been utterly LOVING Olympic hockey - caught the USA - Canada game Sunday night, and am currently enjoying Canada-Germany. So much passion and skill on the ice simultaneously, and the games themselves have little tweaks that are quite nice - no-touch icing, a lack of fighting, few commercial breaks - just very fact-paced competition, and in some of the games, it's effectively All-Star squads battling it out, and everyone cares. Couldn't recommend it more if you've been missing it in favor of, say, ice-dancing (which is great in its own right).

3BK got crushed 15-7 in Beck's and my absence. JD just killed us, by all reports. We'll try to right the ship soon - we've got J-Ro and the "Pasty Gangstas" tomorrow, featuring Paul and Trant amongst others. Should be exciting.

Running out of gas here - I'll try to get the album reviews back on track*, but in all honesty, I'm gettign that crush of a feeling that every second should be spent on something else. I'm going to pass on fantasy baseball this year for this reason - GASP - and try to, as they say, GET SOME THINKING DONE. It's incredibly sad, but I need to re-orient my mind to how important I think the research is to get myself *really* going on it, and if that can be facilitated by not spending 40 hours reviewing draft magazines, then so be it.

* - Interlude - I throw down reviews on a couple of requested albums and reveal a desert island disc that was released in 2009 (!!!) and no one comments? Man. I was pretty sure we were all tragically alone before; now I am convinced.

Out of gas here. The beat is generally rolling on, with S / W / F doign just fine, and the day-to-day not getting us down too much. I really wish I could do more "pleasure" reading, but I find myself collapsing into sofas at day's end these past few. It's just way too tempting to watch the Olympics with my brain in a state of nothing. I can't even bring myself to comment on Tiger right now, other than to say that the very concept of "Billionaire Buddhist" is rife with absurdity. Anyways, big game tomorrow; I'll play and try to do something awesome so I can write about it. Wish us luck. This has been a boring life-review / diary entry kind of blog post that did not go into a level of detail adequate to render it interesting...

3 Days of Dumb

I'm thoroughly aggravated at my workplace right now. In the past couple of days, I've had numerous students cancel on me - not entirely surprising, it's finals week - but no one really called to confirm their appointments, so this resulted in me going in several times from Mon to Wed and waiting for students who didn't show. I was biking to work, so several of those trips involved biking back and forth, getting sweaty and all hair-a-tussled for no good reason. Did I mention that it was 112 on Monday, in the hundreds on Tuesday, and still 95 yesterday. Awesome!! So i am sub-pleased with the folks responsible. Oh, well. That's what I get.

I've attempted to direct some of my ill-energy at exercising and guitar playing which has worked to a mixed degree. I ran about 3 miles Monday, 4 miles Tuesday and 7 miles on Wednesday - the last one turned out to be a bad idea as my left knee started clicking at about the six mile mark. Boo-urns. So I've decided to take today off and jump back on the proverbial running horse tomorrow (Note - taking the day off still includes running a 400 yard dash with the pups on their walk. Which is, as mentioned, awesome).

So on one of my runs I listened to the indomitable "Omaha Stylee" by 311 and decided to learn it. And once that fell easily, I started conquering other 311 songs. Yeeha. SO if you're in the need for some white boy funk metal, give me a call.

Tonight: the plan is to go to see Beck's boyfriend Indiana Jones. Don't know if that will pan out timing-wise (Beck gets off from work about 7, which could mean 8, and given her circa 9:30 bedtime lately, probably not a great idea to head to a 10 o'clock showing. Especially ona school night).

Two "shouldn't we talk about the weather" items: one, after being well into the 100s on Tuesday, today it's maybe 80, if that. Wa-friggin'-hoo; we push the deadly summer off at least another couple of days. Two, this Sunday past was absolutely fantastic - my back was bothering me a bit, so I skipped Ultimate and opted for a sit out by the pool day instead (and put a healthy dent in what might be one of the best novels I've read, The Sot Weed Factor). Just a gorgeous, perfect day for it, 100 degrees notwithstanding. I also had a bizarre string from Sunday through Monday where every single sporting event I even glimpsed came out favorably for the team for which I was rooting. Off the top of my head, in that two day span, The Cubs won twice, the Dbacks won twice, the Celtics and Spurs won Game 7s, the Penguins and Red Wings advanced to the Stanley Cup Finals, the Red Sox won twice (and threw a no-hitter) and the Yankees lost. Great stuff.

Of course, that little streak was certainly not in effect last night. No analysis here - but if you can't cash in on the game where you have a 20 point lead midway through the 3rd quarter, it might be a hard series for you. Ugh. Not giving up, of course, but that was pretty barfariffic last night.

Alright, here's to upward facing days. I've been funked by bad Ultimate, bad work, bad disc golf, bad condo car thieves, aching backs and knees, just general badness of late and it's time to bust out. RAWWWWWWRRRR!!! Condo, hear my electric guitar!!!

(Oh, and if you are ludicrously bored, I just finished a fantasy strat-o-matic season and documented the results here). (Yes, I'm a dork).

Ultimate and Baseball x 3

Made it out to Sprawl practice tonight. Winds were howling throughout, hitting somewhere b/w 25 and 35 with gusts. You don't need to be an Ultimate player to understand how stupid this can make any game that involves a frisbee. We're talking pulls that don't make it past half-field, throws that float in the air forever, discs that roll 80 yard but end up behind where the person threw it - blar. I thought I left this crap behind on the East Coast, but alas, turns out it rears its head every once in a while in these parts, too. Of course, the rarity of the windy day only amplifies its effect: people consequently aren't used to the effects of the wind and don't know really simple, basic strategy that you have to employ when considering it. So tonight was a little stupid, lots and lots of turns and stupid decisions and more or less unplayable Ultimate.

(Insert quick wind lesson: if the win is in the 30 mph range and blowing "north-south" on the field - meaning the wind is with you completely in one direction and against you completely in the other - the chances of working a disc all the way up the field against the wind are extremely low. Really, the best chance of scoring an upwind point is if the other team turns it over close to their own endzone. So if you are going downwind - DON'T TURN IT OVER NEAR YOUR OWN ENDZONE! Don't even attempt tough short throws - when in doubt, punt! This is Ulti 101 type stuff, but tonight saw a lot of Sprawl players turfing the disc and giving the upwind team a ten yard field to play with. Just stupid, and inexcusable after the fifth time. Sheesh).

On top of the wind stupidity, I'd say there were about seven captains on the field at any given time. And I love organized Ultimate, people who really think through their strategy and teamwork-oriented practices. But this is a team that is currently meeting once a week, and having diatribes repeatedly launched from multiple sources, saying different things is not just counterproductive, it's absurd in light of the situation of the team at this moment and the fact that there are different people showing up each week. Jeff and Bryan, the actual captains, do a great job of explaining what they want to happen in a given practice and in a given situational scrimmage - but the second they stop talking, everyone else starts. It's overwhelming. And I don't think talking about Ultimate accomplishes as much as Ultimate players think it does - certainly stopping practice to speak in frisbee platitudes isn't the best use of practice time.

Alright, enough ranting; I do enjoy having a club team to play with. And there are some great players out there. One thing I enjoyed about Jackhammer up in Boston was the general respect that people gave each other; people assumed the other people knew what they were doing, and didn't need to be told every little thing. If differing strategic points came up, sure, you could talk, but there wasn't a running assumption that everyone needed to be informed in every moment what to do.

Okay, baseball times three: first we have props of the day to Matt Kemp of the LA Dodgers, who in today's game with the Pirates got caught in a rundown between 2nd and 3rd but rolled along the ground under the third basemen, stood up and sprinted to third, safe. He got out of a pickle! Outside of fourth grade, that doesn't happen. Nice work.

Second, Billy Butler, DH for the KC Royals, popped up to first base with a runner on first today. Butler did not hustle but rather walked three steps after hitting the ball. Super heads-up Angels first baseman Casey Kotchman let the pop-up drop in front of him - the runner on first had to go to second. So Kotchman tossed to the second baseman covering first, who in turn tossed it to the shortstop who tagged out the baserunner. A pop-up turned into a doubleplay! There's a rule in this general vein - the infield fly rule - that keeps players from turning pop-ups into double plays on the baserunners. But there's no rule for this situation, because all Butler had to do to prevent this from happening was JOG to first base. Que idiota! So new question - why don't more fielders let pop-ups drop like this? Even with the infield fly rule, surely baserunners would get confused and screw up on occasion, resulting in more outs, right? I mean, it's a little bit of a travesty if professional players drop pop-ups like morons routinely, but it's within the rules, yes?

(Speaking of - I love that the NHL changed a rule - okay, technically, they changed an interpretation of a rule - in the middle of the freaking playoffs. If you haven't heard, Steve Avery adopted some unusual strategy recently - instead of screening the goaltender with his back to the goal like a manly man, he faced the goalie up and waved his stick in the goaltender's face. It looked ridiculous - and it shouldn't be too hard to find video - but there was no rule against it, and hey, that sounds pretty damn distracting to me, so why not? The next morning the NHL declared such behavior "unsportsman-like conduct" that would incur a two minute penalty. So no one will likely ever do it again. The general sports media reaction has been one of making fun of Avery and essentially calling his actions "bush league." I personally think he discovered a way to antagonize the goalie *legally* and took the risk, mad himself look like an idiot, all with the purpose of helping his team win the game. Hmmm, a self-sacrifice that aims toward team success? Isn't that pretty much the cornerstone of team-play make them better men type athletics? So Steve, I'll join the consensus and say you looked stupid doing that, but I appreciate your intentions. Here's to doing everything you can to win and really meaning such sentiments when you speak them).

(My other favorite rule change - man on first, takes off to steal second, but the batter hits a foul ball. Man remains standing between first and second, but he's only one foot away from second base. Umpire says, "go back to first." Man says, "I am on first - I'm taking my lead." Ump consults rulebook, shrugs, says play ball - man steps on second. Stolen base! Major League Baseball immediately institutes a rule that says you have to retag the base after a dead ball. That story may be apocryphal, but the sentiment is the same - blazing loophole in the rules, and dude took advantage. No problem with that from my perspective).

Okay, back on track, third: oh, STUPID, STUPID Alfonso Soriano. If you've ever talked Cubs with me, you know that I am not thrilled about Soriano's employment by the northsiders - he's a good player, don't get me wrong: you can check his stats here, and among other things he has a career .840 OPS, which is not bad at all, and he has a couple of 30-30 seasons and one 40-40 season. But we pay him GREAT player money - 136 million over 8 years, or $17 million / year - and he just isn't worth it. His greater sins: he has an OBP around .330 (meaning he gets on base about a third of the time), but insists on batting first in the lineup (where you ideally have someone with more like a .380 OBP). He swings from his heels constantly, tries to crush the ball all the time, and consequently strikes out a TON. He plays left field like an absolute non-athlete. AND he has this great little habit of "bunny-hopping" when he catches fly balls.

That's right: the Cubs leftfielder, a professional athlete, "bunny hops" when he catches the baseball. And hey, guess what - though he and the manager and others deny it, it certainly looked like Soriano strained a calf doing his seventh grade dance the other day and is now on the 15 day DL. ML seasons are approximately 180 days, so 15 days is roughly 1/12th of a season, and 1/12th of 17 million = 1.4 million dollars. ARGH!!! In related news, [insert hokey pokey / chicken dance costing 2 million here].

And a little bonus baseball, though not actual baseball: I forgot to mention that at the game the other night, the Dbacks put a marine up on the gigantor HD scoreboard and identified him to the crowd as a marine who had been wounded in combat in Iraq. They then asked the crowd to recognize this hero. And a standing ovation ensued. So while the crowd is standedly ovating, this guy is sitting there, awkwardly smiling into a camera. For a protracted length of time. Strange.

Now, I don't want to come down on this guy, because he fought and suffered for what I'm sure he perceived to be the great value of defending his country. I appreciate his views and his service towards those views. That's not what strikes me about this little mini-event between innings at a baseball game. What strikes me is the following (in list form!):

Is baseball inevitably tied to the American jingoistic value system?
In such an overtly politicized war, are the DBacks as an institution making a comment as to their position via this act?
If they are, is this an act that plays particularly well to the local conservative atmosphere, or is it just the above mentioned baseball-Americana connection?
Is a baseball game really the appropriate place to make such commentary?
OR, are the DBacks not so much making commentary on the war, but more commentary on themselves, a sort of "hey look at us, we are the type of organization that supports troops"?
Is the jumbotron, on which we just watched a bunch of racing hot dogs, really the appropriate context for such a tribute?
Was this done impromptu or as a planned mid-inning event?
Does it matter that we receive no information of this man's actions, other than that he was "wounded in combat?" Does employing the "troop wounded in combat" narrative grant a sanctity that transcends the particulars?
Does one participate in standing ovations as genuine recognition, or does mob mentality and/or the desire to not look like someone who doesn't support troops render any kind of genuine statement impossible?

Again, I'm not attacking this troop or troops in general; I'm really questioning the implications of the ritual. I don't necessarily believe that being wounded in Iraq qualifies as "defending our country," though I am certainly not expert enough on foreign politics to delineate what would and what would not constitute that. But I think the question is obviously in the air, and so such a forced show of "this is how we think around here" demands some skeptical contemplation.

But beyond all of that - WHY, oh, oh, WHY did they play Born in the U.S.A.? Please, someone, just READ the LYRICS. Or spend two seconds looking at what the people at songfacts have to say about the meaning of the song. Unless the DBacks were making a hyper-ironic statement there ("Hey, we're not above using this soldier to improve our own PR, HA - that's almost as bad as the US treated its Vietnam vets, just like in this here Springsteen ditty!"), this is just typical idiot-minded use of an anthemic chorus. This complaint is so old its hardly worth making - didn't Reagan unintelligently use this as a campaign song in the 1980s? So DBacks, get with the program! Step into the now! "Born in the U.S.A." = not a patriotic song!

Of course, the decision by your music director to play "Killing in the Name of" by Rage Against the Machine during a pitching change = AWESOME. It's just nice to hear, at this family fun event, a song that repeats the screamed lyric "FUCK YOU I WON'T DO WHAT YOU TELL ME!" some SIXTEEN TIMES at its end. Of course you didn't play that part; you played the part about "those who burn crosses." Hmmmm... regardless, I'm glad that you put FYIWDWYTM in my head; I had an easy response ready every time your PA system boomed "Everybody clap your hands!"

And finally, this just in from the You Can Awesome Dept.: after Pope Benedict concluded his speech on the White House lawn today, President Bush, his voice picked up by microphones, said, "Thanks, pope, that was an awesome speech." Dude buddy bro, indeed.
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Now playing: Violent Femmes - American Music

Quiero que ser contigo, ser contigo noche y dia

And welcome to 2008. The Lovely Beck and I took the pups up to the local park the other morning for a jaunt / sprint around the vast expanses; a good time was had by all. We're lucky to live smack in the middle of the suburban heaven that is Scottsdale; just check out the view we get from said nearby park:

Borderline idyllic. The titular New Year has been treating us reasonably well. As predicted, Beck fell asleep at approximately 9 pm on the eve, leaving yours truly to a Dick Clark-less rockin' NYE of the Eddie Murphy / Richard Prior classic Harlem Nights which, for all its stupidity, was actually quite palatable. I sucked in a couple of episodes of Family Guy on TNT in an effort to stay up for the grand moment, and a firework or something went off on TV and/or in real life, because Beck actually deigned to grant me her conscious presence for the 12 am moment. We ecstatically watched a two hour old replay of New Yorkers celebrating the new year, proposing to their girlfriends and the like. Tres monumental. Phoenix wins super bonus lame points for failing to display its own NYE celebration, bowing to a rerun instead. Must be the writer's strike.

New Year's day, in contrast, was quite excellent. I went on a 5.5 mile run in the AM, arriving home in time to shower and watch the first outdoor NHL game in America, Pittsburgh at Buffalo, which was a lot of fun. Sidney Crosby is a bad-ass. I took some notes on the game with some kind of blog post in mind, but all I ended up noting was how ridiculous their focus on the weather conditions was (it's snowing! Yep!) and how reverent they were towards one of the announcers anecdotes from the 70s or 80s or so in which hockey players went into the stands and beat spectators with the spectators' own shoes. Contrast that aw-shucks reminiscence to the holy-hell terror of the sports media coverage of the Ron Artest melee from a couple of year's back, and I'm sure you have at least a thesis or two on the unequal treatment of white & black sports stars in the U.S. Just sayin'.

The rest of the week went swimmingly - I tutored a bit, by far the highlight being my efforts to teach an 8 year old girl how to add and subtract the numbers 0-9 without using her fingers to count. I kept her mightily entertained and engaged - she even said, "wow, I only feel like I've been here ten minutes!" when she had to leave at the hour and a half mark, shattering all reasonable scales of cuteness in the process. Tutoring otherwise continues to merely roll on.

It thankfully sounds like the Sime-ster is doing reasonably well up in Boston; I would say to pray for his recovery, but Richard Dawkins has been telling me that such thoughts are frivolous at best, pernicious at worst. I've been listening to The God Delusion over the past couple of days as I've walked to work; so far I am limited to the impression that Dawkins is way too pissed off on the topic for a true "rational" discussion and that his complaints thus far are wholly unimaginative and played. I.e., I haven't really heard anything new thus far, which is pretty disappointing.

By far the biggest news of the new year is that after a year of here and there, non-focused and interrupted effort, I've finally sorted my iTunes library and now everything is correctly dated and album covered. (I know, I know, hold your applause). This takes a RIDICULOUS long time, but it's pretty satisfying to me to be able to sift through my album collection on a computer screen as though it were a real set of albums. Somewhere, there's a french guy screaming about simulacra and simulations. Seriously, though, my iTunes is pimped. So.... yeah.

Otherwise, it's been a fair amount of running (5.5, 4.8. 3.2, and 4 since 2008 began, go me), culminating in today's sitting around and watching the first couple of games of NFL playoffs (see outraged extra point diatribe below). Beck and I also hit up Before the Devil Knows You're Dead last night (review pending) which left us both wanting more (and less, in terms of PSH sex scenes - egad). And beyond that, it's the usual game of feeding, walking, and observing the dogs in their natural state of extreme sleepiness - some all-timers in this set. Enjoy the pics below as I drift to sleep wondering if this blog has devolved into a SW shrine. I am a 21st century cat lady.


Of course, you can't pass up an opp to post a pic of the sleeping Beck AND a Sparkle, the former modeling her schwank Candy Cane pajama pants:

Goodnight Peeps.

Hockey Night in Glendale

The Beck graciously took me to a Coyotes-Canucks game last night, approximately the third regular season NHL hockey game I've attended in my life (Blues-Blackhawks a long time ago, Sharks-Stars in Dallas for a Christmas present during college, and now, Yotes-Nucks in lovely Glendale, AZ). We had sick seats for this one - one of the docs in Beck's group has third row, center-ice behind the penalty box season tix, and sold them to us at a big fat discount. So that was sweet. Here are some views of the action from our keep-all-our-money-in-a-big-brown-bag vantage point:


So yeah, SWEET seats. FTR, this is what the greatest hockey player in the history of ever looks like from across the rink when shot with the wrong setting on the camera:

I apologize for the focus / graininess of some of these shots; I was trying to use the sports setting for the first time and in the low light (and being shot through the glass), a lot of the shots used a very high iso setting and resulted in a whole lot of noise. My bad. The shots of the arena came out decently well:


Beck noted that both anthems were fantastic and met her approval (a rare event), though she prefers the Canadian anthem. You know, being commie and all. So a great intro, and in case I didn't mention it, this game was the Hockey Night in Canada game of the night. So there was a lot of bonus hoopla in addition to the usual Howling fandemonium that one can expect at a Coyotes game. (This is a lie; it may have been the most apathetic crowd I've seen). But there were a fair number of Vancouver Canucks fans in the house, making for a nice mix of cheers and boos at any given play. Of course, and this is probably the story of the game, it was very hard to pay attention to either the arena or the action on the ice (that's clearly a lie; I was absorbed).

When Beck and I attended the preseason game in September, there was this guy, let's call him "This Guy," who was sitting in front of us and banging on the glass, screaming his head off, heckling all the players in the penalty box, you name it. Did I mention that he was wearing a backwards Cubs hat? He was. But he was not a kindred spirit. "This Guy" got a C- in the clever department - most of his jokes / heckles were variations on the "you suck/stink/smell/there's something smelly on you" continuum. Yelled very, very loud for the entire game, and in a relatively empty preseason arena, this stands out quite a bit. Of course, normally you would laugh about an obnoxious fan and forget about it. But the Cubs hat stood out. And it stood out even more when Beck and I SAW THIS GUY on TBS during the baseball playoffs! During one of the games where the Cubs were getting their pathetic-in-October butts kicked, THIS GUY got several seconds on the screen hanging his head and cursing. Hilarious! Beck and I laughed quite a bit - really, when you spend three hours with a guy in person making an ass of himself and then get to see him continue the act on national television, it's pretty funny.

So flash forward to last night - this guy is there again! So the September night was not a one time thing; this guy has season tickets! (Beck correctly points out that maybe this is just a cosmic coincidence and we both happen to have attended the same two games. DUBIOUS!). So naturally, Beck and I are quite thrilled to spend anothe revening with this dude. Early on, he seemed relatively sedate...

(Note also the dad and little girl in the foreground. During a goal review (which ended up going against the Yotes, d'oh), the dad yelled at the refs something to the effect of "if you need to look at the replay, it's right up there on the jumbotron! He scored, you idiots!" He then fist-bumped his daughter in a move that was simultaneously adorable and prompted Beck to get her PTA on and question "what is he teaching the children?" Excellent).

But soon, THIS GUY decided that he (and to a lesser extent, his friend who is in some of the above pictures and provided great commentary like "come on guys, shoot better!") was the Coyotes "seventh man," and his indomitable spirit alone would whip the crowd into a Coyote-pumping frenzy. This involved rousing cheers of "come on, stand up!" and "let's make some noise!" Of course, he had a go-to cheer, the age-old "Let's Go Coyotes!" (clap-clap-clapclapclap). Only he would try to start it repeatedly, and no one responded. He would at best get about five people joining him. Like I said, apathetic crowd. About the fourth time he tried this, the guy behind me chimed in:

"Hey, you guys wanna do the wave?"

SO for all of this guy's efforts, we found ourselves in the middle of an apathetic crowd watching a very exciting hockey game. (And an exciting 1st intermission peewee hockey match taboot, which felt a whole lot like watching NHL hockey on barbiturates, and maybe some of Lewis Carrol's pills, too). After two periods and a whole lot of ridiculous saves by the Coyotes goaltender Ilya Bryzgalov, the scored was tied at 0. Things looked like they were going to hold that trend when the Canucks snapped in a quick one timer with about 11 minutes left. THIS GUY was crushed, and did everything he could think of to get the crowd going. Nothing worked. But the Yotes pulled the same trick they did the other day, summoning five minutes of psycho aggression to attack the net. And when Michalek scored on a sweet pass from Doan, the crowd erupted accordingly - and no one was happier than THIS GUY:

Lades and gents, your Nyet Jones picture of the year! YEAH! Dude was genuinely ecstatic. Fun times. The Yotes held on to the tie for the next five minutes which got us BONUS HOCKEY!

And the Yotes survived an exciting overtime to give us... A SHOOTOUT! Tres exciting. Lots of great pics from the tension filled ending:


Unfortunately that last one is the game winner for the Canucks - the little red circle is around the puck which is sailing past Bryzgalov for the win. Sadness. Here's a series of Beck pics showing the elation of the tying goal, the happiness at bonus hockey, and the sadness at the loss:


You'll note that Beck dressed appropriately for the cold game, warmly enough so that even Dippin' Dots could not cool her spirit! (That's right, the Beck got her ice cream fix, and requests that her nickname be referred to as "Double D." Jessica Simpson's father has no comment).

So that was the hockey game - another late-gained point for the Phoenix club, even though the shootout win would have been sweet. No fights at this one, but a lot of hard-checking and nifty stickwork. Great night out, and a good start to our winter vacation!

(And apologies to THIS GUY - I am all in favor of supporting the home team, and I admire your zeal, even if I didn't comply when you scremed "stand up!" in my face. Keep up the good work, and I hope you don't mind this pleasantly mocking cameo in the Nyetverse).

Weather Outside = Frightful

Happy winter solstice peoples! We woke up this morning to this vision of cuddle on the futon:

That's Wrigley and the S-dog, huddled together as close as possible to maintain body heat in the frigid 54 degree (Farenheit) (Thank goodness) apartment. That's 54 inside - believe it or not, Sunny Azz got its Dominique Francon on and turned Frigid Azz. Cold! We finally had to cave and turn on the heater, lest we end up with a vanilla and a chocolate dogcicle. I'm sure you don't believe me, so I brought the trusty FinePix with me this morning to make my case:


That's FROST on the lawn! Wahoo! That's as close to a white xmas as you're gonna see in Scottsdale, folks (insert comment re: but isn't scottsdale all white? here). And I know you've got some crazy notion running through your sugar-plum laden brains that it's just dew. False! Exhibt 2A, please!

That's ice on my finger! (As well as a hyper-detailed picture of my index fingerprint. Take my identity... please! Thanks, I'll be here all week). As Beck forced me to explain, "Dew doesn't Do That," and now I'm sure I've infringed on a Pepsi-cola subsidiary or something. So it goes. Anyways, that's the excitement of the day, that it's dipping down toward 32 at night and making for chilly morning jaunts with the pups. Sparkle in particular notes that you, too, would take half an hour and dance before you poop if you had to squat in ice. Sparkle has taken to curing her coldness ills by donning her fur coat and looking like a pimp, a topic touched upon last winter. When that doesn't work, she channels her inner-kitty and lounges in a sunbeam. Pictorial evidence of Sparkle's feline tendencies:


Nice! Pictures 4 and 5 (as read in standard, left-to-right, up-down non-Hebrew fashion) are the cat pics. If you have a sec, look at picture 3 up close, 'cause that is straight up emo Sparkle. Emo, not emu. Emu Sparkle is off to your right there.

Otherwise, it's been a relatively unsuccessful attempt by the Nyet to grin and bear the bruised hip I received in the finals the other night. As predicted, I was fairly wrecked for the duration of Friday.* Hale, the bony guy with whom I collided on Thursday night (great player and all around good guy), did a number on me, and I'm starting to have a nifty little badge to show for his efforts. Next exhibit is my new "living art" project I call "He-Man Tomer."


And a word to the wise - Google Picasa's "I'm feeling lucky" is not always a great idea. And be warned, that makes it look gross and a whole lot worse than it is.

*(a day that otherwise included a whole lot of reading and a fair shake of guitar shreddage - I am sure I annoyed my neighbors by practicing the guitar solo to More than a Feeling no less than 278 times. I think I've got it - more or less. Also, Beck came home and went running, only decided to go for a walk, so i thought she had been kidnapped or Wrigley had been run over, so I locked the apartment and went out looking for her, forgetting that she didn't have a set of keys. So when I missed her out on her path, she got to spend several minutes standing outside our door in the frost-on-the-grass-creating cold, listening to her phone ring inside the apartment as I frantically called it trying to find her. I'm a neurotic dork. Anyhoo, we went to Houston's afterwards and were deemed attractive enough** to eat at the bar, so that was cool. And delicious - Beck got a prime rib sandwich au jus, and I think there is a special seat in cardiac Hades for my cheeseburger dipped in au jus. Dios mio! I may be going to hell in a condiment, but at least I'm enjoying the ride).

** - Seriously, what's the deal with stupid middle class bourgeois bullshit culture?***

*** - A waitress stopped to talked to us about some lady's Chanel diamond necklace last night. I told her about the coal necklace I have sitting in a drawer at home. She said what? I said give it time.

Today (after navigating frost-infested lawns), I tutored several students, including one who pretty much refused to do anything. Rationalizing with nine year olds is not my forte (mocking them is! See: all of my conversations with William re: Killgore), so trying to convince young Sam that his Christmas break had not in fact started because he still needed to learn his times tables was something of a fruitless exercise. I ultimately motivated him via challenge - five minutes to finish one hundred one-digit multiplication problems, CAN YOU DO IT? More importantly, CAN YOU BEAT ME???!?!?!?? Answer: no, and no****. But at least he got going enough to try. So success-ish.

**** - I finished all 100 in 1:05. My inner nerd vibrated in harmony with all that is.^

^ - really, you should try it sometime - it's weird, because for you or me, the limiting factor is your pen, not your ability to multiply one digit numbers, so you have to enter this meditative state of answering the next couple of questions while still writing the current one down. Interesting experience. Have I nerded you out yet?

And tonight, we start Beck's winter vacation by attending a Coyotes game! I caught a bit of the Yotes-Sharks game Thursday night, and it was quite a comeback by the local lads. It was 1-1 about halfway through the third when the Coyotes got SKA-rewed on a penalty call after a melee near the Sharks goalie. Essentially three guys from each team got involved in a brawl, and all three Coyotes got five minute majors (and a game misconduct for one of them) and only two Sharks got majors. Jeremy Roenick, who very obviously dropped his gloves and scrapped, got off with NOTHING, and the Sharks got a five minute powerplay. And you'll never guess who scored to put them up 2-1. So Wayne Gretzky's going bonkers on the bench, and for the final ten minutes of the game, the Yotes play their brains out but get nothing going. They eventually pull their goalie, but one of their forwards gets a two minute cross checking penalty. So their short-handed for the last 45 seconds of the game, albeit even with their goalie pulled. It's over - NOT! Shane Doan snaps one home off a face-off win, they battle through OT and then win the shootout! Huzzah! SO hopefully tonight will be sweet. I'll bring the camera and try to catch some action. And recap will follow.

In case that's not a long enough post for ya, check this excellent-but-similar to a previous-post video. This time we're featuring REM instead of John Lennon, but I think the mix is quite good:

Now playing: Yes - Heart Of The Sunrise