This Side of Lost

Schilling, 7 innings, five strikeouts... Pujols, two home runs... Kansas City lost... yes, baseball has begun.

And it's about freakin' time. Your Minnesota Twins, 2006 World Champions. Yeah, you heard it here first. Okay, maybe not world champions. But I'd settle for the wild card. Hell, I'd settle for 90 wins. Is that too much to ask?

Meanwhile, Samantha's still not back. :( They stayed over in Clemson Sunday night what with an individual tournament being played out late in the day and didn't get on the road until 11 this morning. So I expect her pretty soon. But seriously... like, what did I do with myself before she came along? Everything just feels off kilter.

So you won't be surprised that I haven't gotten too much done in her absence. I did whip a basic cover letter into shape and applied for a few jobs... not that I'm optimistic about any of them.

In other news:

• My second concert with the Meridian Vocal Consort in Indy was good. I had people I knew in the audience... Gerry and Julie, the conductors of the BCS came out, as did my uncle-in-law Rich. I hung out with he and Jim for much of the afternoon, which was fun but, well, off kilter. See?
• Guh. I'm boring. Insert your own second bullet point of news here.
• Baseball starts today. Oh, did I say that already? Well, tough. And you know what? You're gonna hear it again. Baseball freakin' starts today. Got that? Jason Kubel, 2006 Rookie of the Year. You heard it here first, people.

Meh. Off to do more job apps.

Is my love for the Minnesota Twins. They were down 4-0 earlier today and I was thinking how horrible the year is going to be if they keep hitting like this. Now they're winning 5-4 on some consecutive singles and fielding errors by the Blue Jays, and who racks up the first stolen base of the year? Our 6-foot-4 catcher. Awesome. They can do no wrong.

If you're sick of the baseball talk, I'm sorry, but I think you're gonna have to deal. I'll really try to keep it to a minimum, but sometimes that's about the most exciting part of my day. Sad, huh?

Today I accomplished the following things on the wedding party front:

• Confirmed our venue.
• Confirmed our caterer.
• Called a bunch of hotels about group rates. Mostly left messages.

In other news:

• Ever since doing this meme for Aaron's LJ, I sometimes notice the idiosyncracies of my daily existence. Here's another one: I attempt to retrieve everything the ATM spits out at me (money, card, receipt) as quickly as possible. This involves being able to place said cash into my wallet in the correct order in the short amount of time it takes before the card gets ejected. I've gotten really good at it, and I am disappointed with myself when the machine sits there with any of the three items and beeps at me more than twice.
• This is fantastic. I bet our cats could do that if they weren't so lazy.
• We've purchased tickets to two upcoming musicals. I've got the soundtrack for one, but not the other... anybody care to remedy that? (It's on the wishlist now...)

Okay, back to work...

This post has been edited in an attempt to make this blog a little more anonymous.

In other news:

• Behold, today's headline in the Indianapolis Star. And people seriously ask me if I'm leaving the state when I'm done with my degree...
• Points to our much maligned dean for the topic of his recent presentation.
• The last opera of the season (and our last opera in Indiana, probably) is tonight. *sniff* What a way to go, though.

Hooray, I get a free Saturday to hang out with my wife. Happy weekend, all!

Last year when I was on a LaunchCast kick, I posted my hotlist. The music addiction now is Pandora, which (like LaunchCast) has its own strengths and weaknesses, but the situation is the same... there's music out there that somehow I've become vaguely aware of as being possibly interesting, and I don't want to forget when I stumble across it.

Here's the most recent version of the hotlist.

Matt Nathanson
Elliott Smith
Beth Orton
Duncan Sheik (really! I've heard his later stuff is awesome)
Dispatch
The Duhks
The Bobs
April Cope
Edit: Late Tuesday

People who watch sports hoping to see fights are better off watching hockey than baseball, but there are a few good ones every once in a while, usually precipitated by the batter being hit by a pitch. In honor of the recent Jose Guillen/Pedro Martinez spat, here's the top nine mound chargings, as decided by Sportscenter in 2002.

Oh, and the Twins are 1-5. Surprise, surprise, they're not hitting. Boo.

Life is pretty quiet around here. I've been trying to find a hotel to nab a block of rooms for the party, but our late planning is working against us. Sigh.

In other news:

• Carmen was good. The music was fantastic, although I must say the leads weren't quite up to snuff. We were a little disappointed. But we've probably been spoiled watching opera here. Who knows where we'll be watching it next...
• We went rollerblading for the first time this year yesterday. It was most excellent.
• I'm wearing a short-sleeved shirt that isn't a Friday Hawaiian shirt for the first time this year today. I think spring has finally arrived.
• Amy will appreciate this. I made Chicken Tikka for the first time in years over the weekend. Only I used Veat instead of Chicken. It turned out pretty well.

Lunchtime! Probably won't involve Veat this time. What a great name for a product. Why didn't I think of that?

What kind of video, you ask? Why, talking cats, of course.

It is gorgeous here. The sun has been shining nonstop for two days, and it's 85 degrees. We rollerbladed again yesterday and worked up quite a sweat in the sunshine. I'm not usually a big fan of warm weather, but it's the first warm spell and I'm loving it just like everyone else. Well, almost everyone else... sorry, Mari.

And the Twins are winning! They just swept the Athletics by winning today's game 8-2. The offense took off, finally. But the most exciting thing is what this Fransisco Liriano kid has done so far in three appearances: 6 2/3 innings pitched, no runs, 12 strikeouts. Electric. Now let's see if we can bring it to the Yankees this weekend... yikes!

So it's a good week so far. Too bad it has to go and be Good Friday tomorrow. Way to bring the downer, Jesus.

In other news:

• My new favorite phrase: SLEEP MADNESS.
• My new favorite webcomic: Achewood. Thanks, Nelson!
• My new favorite online distraction: fantasy baseball. Oh, no, what have I done...

Happy Easter, all. Talk with you again after the weekend.

The former is what most of Bloomington is doing by this point. The phrase "Little Five" describes what is basically the biggest party weekend of the year around here, in celebration of the Little 500, the annual bike race (ever seen Breaking Away?). It's kind of an odd cause-and-effect thing: whereby a bike race causes the amount of people sitting out on house porches playing beer pong, that retarded bean bag toss, and drinking alcoholic beverages triples.

The latter is what I am doing. I have a goodly number of journal entries and article synopses to finish up for my internship meeting next week, not to mention the final project for Nisonger's class. So you probably won't be hearing from me for a while. Sorry. And I was doing so well there for a while...

So I'll leave you with one of the best ads to come out of the Firefox Flicks contest so far. Well, maybe not the best, but definitely the funniest.