Top 5

I think most of you know already my love of lists and of choosing favorites. Our little group even had an entire blog dedicated to lists, based mostly on the legwork of Nate. I don't know why this particular list came to mind the other day, maybe the talk of Spring Training vacations or upcoming fantasy baseball, but I put together my list of favorite baseball players of all time. Because of the history necessarily involved in addition to my own relative shallow experience in first-hand baseball knowledge, I'm incredibly curious about everyone else's list. I've only watched baseball for a bit of the 90's and most of the 00's, which swings my list heavily towards recent players. Now, I know most of the big names from other eras, but I can't really put any of them on my list since I haven't gone out of my way to watch old games or research the personalities. I'm confident I could pick out the best players of each generation, but they're mostly flat images made up of statistics and awards. They could never be considered a favorite. So, you out there, feel free to add a top 5 of your own in the comments with the more detailed the explanations the better. Here we go:

1. Ken Griffey Jr.

Without a doubt the easiest choice on the list. The first player I ever really attached to, in my mind, in any sport. The 90s Bulls teams were cherished, naturally, but I feel like Griffey was the first ever choice I made and thankfully it is one that I still respect. I liked the home runs, the crazy highlights in the field, but what stands out most was and is his character: the easy affability and joy in playing baseball. The time he stole a fly ball from his dad, hearing about him as the lead judge of the Mariner's clubhouse kangaroo court. He seemed like the one guy I would absolutely want to hang out with in sports, the guy I would want on my team no matter what. I could watch highlight reels of his catches all day. Oh, and until my Dad finally put a stop to it, I would do the Griffey one-handed follow-through on my swing.

2. Ozzie Smith

The Wizard is a bit tough, being a Cardinal, but I started out baseball as a shortstop and Ozzie Smith was my little league goal for the position. I wasn't a power hitter and we weren't allowed to steal bases yet, so the way to set myself apart was as a fielder, which was not helped by being a lefty who wanted to play shortstop. Through a collection of spins and reloads I would fire across the body to first, until finally forced to give it up for center field.

3. Randy Johnson

My favorite pitcher and one of the most dominant leftys of all time. He was unstoppable in videogames and as long as he wasn't walking people, pretty much unstoppable in real life. I loved that Mariners team.

4. Ichiro Suzuki

Probably common to everyone, but what I look for in a player is the best aspects in how I played (in reality or just imagined). I like baseball players that steal bases, play great defense, and are usually shortstops or center fielders. Ichiro had these, played for the Mariners, and did it year after year.

5. Jeff Bagwell

I liked his crazy batting stance and his stubbornness to not give up the inside corner.

Honorable Mentions

Ernie Banks - If I had seen him play I'm sure he would be top 3, but a great guy.

Jose Reyes

Brandon Phillips

I may have forgotten someone, but I feel like that is the main list. So throw in some new considerations, any stories or rationale for how you found favorites, and we can talk a bit of baseball. I'm surprised at the lack of Cubs, but maybe I shouldn't be. When they were good, they still weren't all that likable. Or they were too tragic. I liked Prior and Wood, but you know. Maybe Randall Simon. I liked the old "I'm going to swing at anything, maybe even a pickoff attempt at first."

Esto es un Mapa

This is a mop. I mean map. Personally, I love maps. They are kind of amazing. From the old ones that were works of art full of sea monsters and dragons

To the strange ones that show different perspectives

To the more politically motivated

Maps are a fascinating portrayal of how one person, country, whatever perceives the world around them, and likewise, can have a profound effect on how other people view the world. Larger scale maps cannot be truly accurate, which is fascinating. How pervasive is the sense that North is up? This has been throwing me lately because I always enter the PSU campus from the north, so my mental map of campus has south at the top of the map. This always makes looking at actual maps of campus really confusing. Did you know that north wasn't always at the top of the map. That convention started when sailors started using the North Star to navigate. Most maps before this placed East at the top. Orientation comes from Orient comes from Oriens, meaning East.

Anyway, about a month ago, I saw some gorgeous maps out in Pioneer Square. I wish I could have gotten some closer pictures, but my camera died. Using about 10 different flowers, a group had mapped out the world to celebrate the Festival of Flowers in June.

The Oregonian posted some pictures with a better vantage point.

Anyway, my classes just ended, so you can expect some more geography/planning nerdery to come. I've been pretty happy to dive back into maps.

Back in Business

Have I used that title yet? Apologies all around for my wildly inconsistent work here. However, school is over for a little bit, and I can get back to throwing pasta at the wall. The good news is that I've had my camera with me lately, so the next few posts will be photo heavy.

It's been a decent summer thus far for seeing some unusual things. Tammy and I have been exploring once more, seeing new neighborhoods, going to new parks and plazas, and wandering around town aimlessly. It's been great. So there will be some items later, but first we have to talk about some Morris dancing.

Morris dancing is something I had only ever heard of before through Terry Pratchett novels. From those, my understanding was always that it was some type of probably not made up English or Scottish folk dancing that involved hitting things with sticks and was generally dangerous to all participants and spectators. For the most part, I was content with this image, though there must be more to it than that.

A few weeks ago, we walked by a pleasant little plaza where you can dip your feet in the water while you read, when we happened across a rather large collection of Morris dancers. Turns out, it was basically a Morris party for some group in Portland that had been around for a while, so groups from all over the west coast came in to celebrate.

So Morris dancing is not all that different from my first impression, though in this setting it is considerably safer, since everyone was sober. It is an actual English folk dance from the 1400s, which can include sticks, bells, swords, and whatever else you can find. The bells are attached to the shins and are used in counterpoint to the accordion or fiddle that is providing the music. When sticks are used, they are for hitting against each other or the ground in rhythm with the song. The dance is usually a mix of steps and wheels with groups anywhere from 2 to, I don't know, say 20 people. School's out, I'm not researching this. Anyway, some pictures:

Notice the bells on the shins.

And the number of different groups in the background.

For this last one, the three would hit sticks together in a way that sort of passed it along to the left, if that makes any sense, and then they would break apart into some skipping and steps.

Here is an example of the dance in action in England:

So there you go, some Morris dancing for you. Oh, and thanks to Terry Pratchett for giving me just enough cultural knowledge to hang myself with. Before this weekend if cornered and asked if I had heard of Morris dancing, I would have responded, "is that the one where you hit stuff with sticks and most people go home bruised?" Now I can confidently say that it's the one where you hit stuff with sticks and hardly anyone goes home bruised, providing they're sober and have practiced recently.

Chronotons and Graviolies

Sorry it's been so long. I keep sitting down, starting posts and then discarding them not even halfway through. I've had things I want to write about, what's happening around here, some urban planning projects in New Orleans, invisible systems, etc...and I do plan on getting back to most of these. But rather than stressing about not finishing things, or feeling like my first post back has to be an award winner, I've decided what matters most is just getting some points up on the board.

I'm in the midst of what I've been calling the Summer of Self-improvement. I'm not entirely comfortable with such an unabashed title, but that's the way it is. I've wanted to do something useful with the extra time on my hands, so I've come up with a few goals. First: I am slowly working my way through the Japanese alphabet and basic phrases. Second: I've been running in the morning. This is stalled as I've failed to get out for about a week now. Third: volunteer as often as possible for all things bike related to put on my grad application. There were other things that have come and gone, but those three are the ones I plan on sticking by all summer. Oh, also my summer class starts on Monday, but I don't think that counts. I do well enough when there is structure provided. The real goal here is to flourish in my current, structureless lifestyle. Let's make it happen.

4square And Brazilian BBQ

Thanks for a great Saturday are in order for Cassio and Ahren. Cass threw a fantastic bbq of Brazilian goodness. Plates were passed around pretty much non-stop of crazy good meats, the best of which was the picanha. There were also some amazing breads and fried rice balls. It was good to be out in a backyard grilling, sitting in the sun. Felt like summer was back.

After this it was up to the NE to Ahren and Megan's for a 4square party. It was rough going at first, but we soon regained our childhood form and laid down some sweet moves. It's really tough to make up rules nowadays. If you don't remember, whoever is in the King Square gets to make up a set of rules to play by until they're knocked out, and I seem to remember it being way easier to invent good rules when I was a kid. Maybe we just had no idea of what good rules were and said whatever came to mind. I don't know. Anyway, we played a bunch of 4square and it was great.

Happy that soccer has led to meeting a great group of people. After a couple false starts with some less fun groups, this has been much better. To finish off the night we came back here for dinner and then watched half of Coraline. Tammy didn't quite make it through before falling asleep, so we had to call intermission.

But way to go world. That was a great Saturday.

A Moral of Note

I had my first scare the other week while playing pop-a-shot at the arcade with Tammy. First off, it's important to note that this was a Sonic the Hedgehog pop-a-shot. Why that's important to note I don't know, but it is. This was all at a decent sized arcade attached to a bowling alley called Big Al's. I guess these side notes are to show how incredibly classy it would sound when I had to tell this tale. I suppose as well, these asides are simply to expand and enhance what is, in all honestly, a momentously foolish and ridiculously brief story. Without further hedging here is the actual story:

I threw my wedding ring while playing pop-a-shot.

See how easily I could have laid it out there. But that seems to be the way I tell stories. I start with roundabout lead ins that delay the story as long as possible. Anyway, my shot missed a bit to the right, but the ring went right through the hoop. Most fortuitously, my ring bounced back to me in much the same manner as the mini basketballs. So naturally I almost put it up for another shot. Ok maybe not, but still. Nearly lost it down the sides of the machine. That Sonic is a greedy one, always trying to collect those rings. What a jerk!

See, it all comes back around. Those asides end up as haphazard references to games from 15 years ago. Look Mom, I'm a writer!

I should probably start planning these posts out in advance.

The moral of the story is thus: The greedy who want more lose all...wait no..um..unless the seed of evil is destroyed it will grow up to destroy us. No that's not it either. Fine, we'll have to use one of my own morals if none of Aesop's will fit.

Don't trust hedgehogs, they're after your valuables. Plus they didn't even count the basket.

NBA Playoffs

It's been a long time since I felt this invested in the playoffs. Part of this is the champion feel to this Bulls team. We've had some playoff runs in the past few years, but never something like this where it would be a disappointment not to win it all. So that's a huge factor to be sure. And I'm also feeling it because I picked Dallas out of the West a few weeks before the playoffs began. Ask my Dad if you need proof. But I've never been this invested in the playoffs as a whole. The West has been incredibly entertaining from top to bottom every round. The top two seeds knocked off, the Lakers getting run out of town, vintage Chris Paul, Memphis forcing their way in, and a ridiculous Rose. We also saw the end of multiple dynasties. Phil Jackson is done. The Spurs, the Lakers, and the Celtics are all showing their years. Maybe they get back for one more year, but they're no longer the gatekeepers to the finals. We're going to be crashing up against the Heat for the next several years.

Anyway, I just saw the first Dallas v OKC game. Nowitzki put up 48 points on 15 shots. He didn't miss a single free throw and he took 24 of them, breaking the playoff record. And OKC was playing serious defense on him. It was one of the most epic performances I've ever seen, the rest of Dallas was playing well, and OKC still kept it close the entire game.

I hope not to miss any of the remaining games this year. This has been an almost World Cup sort of experience. We have a wide open field here. Let's see the Bulls make their mark.

It's getting easier to feel old

A while back I was talking to Jacob Hines and Sean Woitas, and we got around to some of the things that have drastically changed in our life times. I mean, I'm 24 and I already have some of those stories backlogged that the telling to any future kids would inevitably result in them staring at me in disbelief. And these events are from not that long ago. We talked about cell phones. The first cell phone I ever carried was my Mom's and it looked a lot like this:

It was the size of a brick and there was no way that thing was going in your pocket. You had to pull up the antenna to make a call. Do you see that "screen"? Look at it again. It doesn't even have room for an area code. Even to me that relic looks ridiculous. That was just 10 years ago. Nowadays my phone could probably make me pancakes.

You know what really got me down though? I am apparently out of touch with candy. Candy! We went to the corner store to pick up some movie candy and I was thrown off balance by the sheer volume of candy and flavors that I had never heard of before. Starburst sharesize, Sweet Fiesta, Skittles Blenders, Twix Coconut. I have never before in my life felt disoriented in a candy aisle.

This cannot stand! I will regain my candy fitness. Which will be difficult as I work on my actual fitness as well. Geez. Candy used to come naturally.

Excuse me, but I have some serious research to do.

Whaaaat?

Welcome to one of the best dinners of your life! Tammy cooked up Chicken in Cider and Bacon Sauce!? Are you joking, you may ask incredulously? No! Cider And bacon sauce. With parmesan potato wedges and green beans cooked in the chicken broth with more bacon. This was a seriously great weekend.

Sunny Portland

One more set of sunny pictures from this past weekend. These are from a bridge up on Vista, not too much of a hike. This is the first time we have ever gotten Mt. Hood on film (digital?) and I feel pretty good about it. Hope everyone out there had a great Easter weekend!

Some Hippos

These are some hippos we made. Our techniques are still pretty unsound, but we are improving, definitely an up and coming phenom you should be looking out for.

Let me hear you say Rooftop Access!

We are finally hitting some good weather these days. Today was a joyous 68* with more sun than you could shake a stick at, if you were into that kind of thing. So here we have the three major views from our rooftop patio, which is where you live the life.

This is looking due west up at Nob Hill. Fancypants places nobbing it up on their fancy hill.

Up next we have our view due north with the Freemont Bridge and Mt St. Helen's off in the distance. You can usually see it pretty clearly, but I still haven't figured out the right setting on my camera to really light it up. Nonetheless, it is magnificent.

Finally we are looking a little east, but mostly due south. If you look closely you can see where Benton Fraser first followed the trail of his father's killers. For various reasons, he stayed. You can also see a bit of the downtown skyline, which is probably a bit more interesting at night.

The one incredible downside, though, is that there is no grilling allowed. This is severe disappointment, but we must carry on.

This week we shall see some very silly cupcakes, a little bit more of downtown Portland, and finally some Mt Hood. Tammy found a pretty sweet little bridge with a great view of the city and for the first time in decades, a clear view of Mt Hood.

Enjoy your Easter everybody!

Welcome to the show Pokey

We are finally in business! In honor of the Gumby cartoon that was playing throughout the whole buying process, we have decided to name it Pokey after one of the greatest ponies of all time. This little dude is AWD (ready for Mount Hood and snowboard trips next winter), with a bike rack, and cd player. Yes, this means I am back in the business of mix cds.

The buying process wasn't too bad actually. A couple weeks of research and then three days of actual shopping around. The amount of information available online lets you get superprepared before going in, so we were feeling comfortable enough to buy early on. First day of shopping around I went out with Sam and Sean to a few dealerships: Subaru, Toyota, and Honda. There were several options available at Toyota and Honda. We were hoping for a small suv, but were pretty doubtful that something like that would be in our price range. But hooray hooray, not only did our top choice (crv) drop into our price range, but it had decent mileage and a 6 month power train warranty, which was an absolute rarity. So we ended up in the upper levels of our price range, but got the car we wanted in our price range and even managed to bargain down about $1200.

Things have been going well so far with more and more trips across the river, getting out to soccer games without having a 35 minute bike ride, and Tammy getting over to work everyday. Pokey is holding up. I'll have more pictures soon, and I'm sure Pokey will start making it into some vacation pictures as well. Seattle for the second weekend in May and Montana sometime this summer. Road trips are now on the table. That is glorious news.

Anyway, things are looking up. It looks like sun all week, I am up off my butt and running in the mornings, I'll start work sometime this month, and I found a bike/workshop volunteer dealie that will start in May. I am now a person that does things.

Portland's very own Godzilla

I nearly fell off my bike the first time I saw this guy looming over Stark St. And just as suddenly as he appeared, he is gone once more, returned from whence he came. He bides his time waiting for the day that Portland will need him.


I also want to point out that the top two floors of this building are residential. Someone woke up on a Saturday morning with an enormous crab right outside their window.

Life is Bananas

1. I have a job
2. I have my own company?
3. We quite nearly have a car
4. The Bulls are great, or should I say Los Bulls
5. We tried to buy some plants for the apartment and the lady at the garden store said no

Clearly, there are many bananas. I think all of these will be covered in more detail at a later date, but here we go.

1. Melody has set me up with some work with RDC3 doing some work with Razor's edge for OES and maybe Marylhurst. At the very least, it looks like I'll have work for the next 3 months. Wooo!

2. For tax purposes and some other reasons, I am setting myself up as an independent contractor for this. I think this means I own my own business. I'm not sure yet. This should start to solidify in the next week, and maybe start work this month.

3. We have put a deposit down and they have pulled the car off the sales floor. Either Monday or Tuesday we will be heading over to sign the final papers for a 2000 Honda CR-V. I had planned out a series of posts detailing the car process from the point of view of a first-timer. I may still write out a wrap-up post to go with some pictures, but no series on the lengthy process as this all took about 3 days.

4. The Bulls clinched the first seed in the east, are well ahead of the Lakers in the West, and might still catch the Spurs for best record in the league. I am endlessly jealous of Mom, Dad, Nate, and Dana for having a set of tickets for each series including the finals if they make it. So jealous.

5. We need plants for our apartment. We face north and north only. We were denied plants. Even though there are many low light and indoor plants a person may have, and we saw at least a couple at this store, we were denied plants. No plants for us. The end.

Pictures of the car up this week, clarification on job status soon, and there are some pictures I still need to get of Tammy's camera for a post. One of these photos is of the tremendously large crab that ravaged downtown Portland.

Cannon Beach

The McBeths are in town this week, which is super exciting. This is the first time we've seen Sean out here, and it is not often we get Sam as well. We made a quick trip out to the beach yesterday, to Cannon Beach, Seaside, and Astoria. A little chilly, but I always do like getting out to the beach. These shots are from Cannon Beach, which I suppose is pretty popular with the surfers, although there weren't any out there yesterday.

Astoria turned out to be pretty cool as well, but we didn't spend too much time there. I had to get back for a soccer game, so we didn't get around as much as I would have liked. Regardless, it was a hilly little town alongside the Columbia River right next to the ocean.

I'll have more stuff this week as we continue our McBeth adventures. I think I'm finally out of the woods with whatever kind of illness I had, so I can focus once more and get back to writing.

Ice Cream Cake

Another creation of Tammy's kitchen, although this one wasn't the unmitigated success that we have seen in the past. Mostly I think it came down to the fact that the ice cream cake just isn't quite worth it. It tasted pretty good, although not quite as good as some of the other cakes we've done, but it was several times over more work than other cakes. Also, decorating went poorly. We tried to do frosting with a ziplock bag. All in all it was a herculean effort, but not one that will be repeated. I think we'll focus more on baking, and if needed, just add the ice cream at the end. That's the moral of the story. You can always add ice cream at the end.

A few pictures ago

Back in business with a few pictures from Nate's visit. We still are far from adequate when it comes to taking pictures, but we're working on it. So I thought I'd show you the Waffle Window we found down an alley.

One of the classiest places we've found so far. We also have a few shots from our night over at the Silver Dollar Horses Horses Saloon, or something like that anyway. The three of us played pool and somehow we all lost.

All the concentration and serious faces in the world couldn't help us sink a shot, but at the very least we were evenly matched.

Nate Nate

We'll have a better post with pictures up next week, hopefully, but I wanted to throw something on here before we leave for Chicago tomorrow. Nate was in town Friday to Monday, which was fantastic. It was one of the walkingest weekends of my life, but really good times. Days were made of good food in large quantities, breakfast out every day, a blazers game, saturday market, arcade, billiards, donuts, videogames, and still more walking around. We made it through pretty much everywhere downtown, most of Hawthorne, and a little bit of Mississippi/Alberta. Weather held out well around 55 with infrequent rain.

This was kind of our first run through of hosting someone besides parents, which lent an interesting perspective. I think both of us are feeling pretty comfortable these days in getting around town under the scrutiny of a third party, finding good eats, and filling time with fun stuff. Nate seemed pretty approving of our new apartment and Portland in general. Food carts are a big winner in getting people on board, at least among our friends. You can get a ton of great and varied foods for super cheap.

Anyway, good times were had. We didn't do amazing, but we will have some pictures up later, which is a positive step. Anyone who wants to come out here, we now have space and are happy to show you around.

No no I never go to work

Basically sums it up.

Multnomah Falls

With Melody in for the week, we made the trip out to Multnomah Falls along the Columbia River and I-84. It may be next to impossible to see, but we're over on the right there. I think we're smiling. We're definitely getting wet.

Near the falls is the Vista House. A fancy little overlook of the river valley and mountains. It was also crazy windy. To the point of chasing down hats and holding on to Tammy so she didn't fly away.

It's feeling more and more like spring. Getting out more, biking more, baking stuff. Guess the last part has nothing to do with spring, but I am happy about it.

Tammy's fancy new hair

Some days you just got to walk in and ask them to take off all your hair. She was kind of freaked out at first with how drastic it was, but she's coming around.

Back to business

Hello hello!

Welcome back everyone. I tried to wait it out with the fox post, just hoping someone would take care of that for me, but no luck. I am still without pet fox. Onto the news!

We have been up to some things since my last post and we will be up to many more as March looks to be a busy old month. I am finally back into soccer, with much rejoicing. Seems to be a good group of people more or less my own age, which has been something of a rarity. It'll be much more competitive than last year playing against quite a few college players, which I'm looking forward to. Season starts in April and we've gotten together for a few games already as a kind of warm up. All good things that will require a great deal of wheezing until I get back up to speed.

Last weekend we made our first trip out to the coast. We went out to Seaside, which is less than 2 hours from here. We walked the beach, ate pancakes and hung out with some seals. Everything you could want from a beach. Weather was sunny, a bit above 50*, and did it ever feel good. We are missing the sun pretty badly. Tammy went in to the doctor recently to find out why she's been tired, and it is most likely due to a Vitamin D deficiency from lack of sun. Pretty much everyone out here takes D supplements. We need sun. We stopped in at a little aquarium near the beach where you got to feed the seals, and these seals were pro. Each one had its own move it had perfected to attract potential feeders. One would rapidly slap a flipper on its belly, one would lay upside down on a rock and catch things in his mouth, one would open and close its mouth real wide like a mini golf obstacle...they were ridiculous. We did get a little sad when we found out that pretty much everyone out at the beach had at least one dog. Some people had as many as five. Just didn't seem fair.

The other major event is that we made our first ever pie. It was a chocolate peanut butter pie and life was great. Pie in the house means you are living the dream.

So those are the major points of the last couple weeks. This week we have Melody in, and I'll have a post about our trip to Multnomah Falls with pictures on Wednesday, on Friday we'll have Nate, and the following weekend we'll be heading back to Chicago. Hopefully this hectic end to March will just make the month fly along and we'll be in spring before you know it. I want to see the sun.

Winter needs a swift kick in the pants if you ask me.

We have domesticated the fox!

and I want one. You will be able to get a little guy like this:

This is amazing news for everyone that wanted a Shiba Inu just because it looked kind of like a fox. It will be like a more athletic Corgi that likes to pounce on things (seriously I looked up pictures and that was like 60% of them). National Geographic did a piece on a group of biologists in Russia who have been working since the 1960s on domesticating foxes through breeding. This is great news. Some day I will have a little dude like this.

Article here and pictures here with the picture above taken from here.

Sign People

We have found the clip art sign people out here in Portland to be somewhat overdramatic. Crushed in Gate and Slippery When Wet are hamming it up real good in these two public service adverts. Portland needs to hire an acting coach.

Marshmallow times

We need some new entries in the Top 10 Movies category over at Marshmallow Fight so head over and submit yours. If you happened to miss music I think you can still submit those, and for those of you who have can now turn in your movie list. The theme for this one is a little different. We're focusing mostly on movies to be watched over and over, the ones that stick by you and would make you happiest if it appeared on tv when you got home from work.

So that's the contest of the season, and we are just about ready for suggestions for the next set. Books and tv shows seem the most obvious, but maybe there's a dark horse candidate you want to put forth. I think I would add Top 5 Superheroes to the discussion.

Citizens! Lend your voice!

Hurry, we are running out of time!

I miss this game. A completely unique game in my childhood. The countdown, taunting, and possibility of all players losing made this seem a mad rush to save something. Like a space station I think. As a little kid this was both nerve-wracking games (by the way, I had to look up wracking or racking, apparently they both work and I'll pick the one worth more in Scrabble) and exhilarating. You really felt like you saved the day AND you got to stick it to a smug little computer virus.

I always wondered if my parents hated some of these games. I mean, it was no Snail's Pace Race, which in retrospect is somehow less exciting than it sounds, but still as a little kid you can hear that computer voice yelling its catchphrases all day. So speak up out there, fond memories or horrible nightmares?

Luggage

I started watching Die Hard and I couldn't pay attention after the first two minutes. Something happened and I just could not help, but fixate on this minor detail. John McClane has just gotten off the airplane and is standing next to baggage claim. This gentleman standing next to him is struggling to pull his bag off the claim belt. Where this goes wrong is in its blatant use of an empty suitcase. Surely there must be someone working wardrobe nearby that could have loaned out a few shirts to fill the suitcase, but no. Let's make this poor guy off the street have to "act." Just watch from the 1:50 mark to the 2 minute mark.

I have no idea why this bothers me, or why I even noticed, but now it will not leave me alone.

Merry Christmas

Black Bear

If you are maybe having an off day, need some cheering up, then have I got the video for you. This is a little old, and was first brought to my attention by Tammy, but every once in a while it needs to be seen again.

Some choice lines:

"This is what the bear probably looked like...except real."

"I'm good. I'm uhh faster than a bear."

And honestly, just watch that bear climb the tree. You'll start feeling better. I promise.

Said Cupcakes

Pirate themed chocolate cupcakes with a peppermint frosting. Sooo good and that blue is fantastic for a frosting.

I'm terribly sorry

but it seems the world is ending. At this moment I am drinking V8 and eating whole wheat pita with roasted red pepper hummus.

At the very least I believe later today will involve mint chocolate cupcakes. Equilibrium restored.

Turandot

We have now officially opera'd! And I have all the notes at the ready. Overall, we were pretty happy, enjoyed it, although I don't think has moved up on our priorities at all. No hurry to get back to another, but we had fun with this one.

Turandot is by Giacomo Puccini, who also did Madame Butterfly. The basic story is that Turandot, the imperial princess of China, has set up a contest wherein any suitor must answer three riddles. If they fail, they are executed. If they succeed, wedding times. Calaf, male lead, answers the riddles, but Turandot throws a fit about not wanting to marry him. So Calaf gives her a riddle of his own. If she can learn his name by morning, he will be executed. A lot of running around, tempting Calaf with money/women/what-have-you, and the torturing of a slave who loves Calaf. By morning Turandot has fallen for him and says his name is Love. The end.

Fun fact: there is a long lost son in the first minute. Over/Under for long lost relative was four minutes and it was still under!

More specifically, I had issues with certain things, but not all things. For the negatives: I was not a huge fan of the female lead, the set, or the costumes. Now, I pretty much knew going into the opera that I probably wouldn't like the female characters. I'm ok with the lower ends, but I really don't like the upper range tremolo singing. The really loud, higher pitched warbling always feels kind of grating to me. So, by the accounts of other people who had seen this showing, I guess she was pretty dern talented, but I didn't enjoy it.

Both the set and costumes suffered from modernization. For the set/scenery/setting/whatever you call it, I felt let down. My impression of opera is that there is generally very few set changes, that most of the drama happens in one place, and this was true for Turandot. The problem was that this one locale was just a semi-circle shaped entirely by corrugated metal sheeting with portraits hung along in rows. I have no idea why the palace was made of corrugated metal. For the costumes, some people were wearing "modern" clothing and some were in full robes. The modern clothing consisted of women's power suits, slacks/button-ups/ties office clothes, and a leather trench coat. It was ridiculous. The four main characters looked like Barbara Bush, Hagrid, Lucy Liu, and Gandalf respectively. How can I take this seriously?

The modernization may have been the biggest problem for me. I don't want them to pick and choose which characters wear updated clothing. I'm completely fine suspending disbelief that this rather hefty male lead is supposed to be a supremely athletic and dashing young prince, but don't dress him in a leather trench coat give him Hagrid's haircut. No power suits! Modernizing this old opera should not mean bring it up to the 1980s. I feel there are three good options. Bring it up to current date stylishly, go with traditional/original costumes, or simplify the traditional/original costumes. It's hard to see the Prince Calaf falling head-over-heels at first sight for someone dressed in a power suit with an old lady's haircut.

There's also, I feel, a major issue with the plot. They contemporaried up the clothes and setting, but the plot of the opera was unchanged. All the characters are still acting like it's ancient China. I feel like if you modernize the accoutrements, you must update the story to fit your chosen era.

Anyway, the good parts were still many. I enjoyed the rest of the music, the female supporting role was fantastic, and it had a pretty good sense of humor. It was in Italian, but the translations were projected above the stage so we could sort of follow along. The dialogue was pretty funny at times and some of the other characters were pretty solid. The three ministers Ping, Pang, and Pong in particular were favorites. It was about three hours long with two intermissions, but we stayed for the full show and never really felt like skipping out early.

All in all a good night, a good reason to dress spiffy and head out. I don't think we would turn down another opera in the future, but I would like any other opera to be in a more august theater, one that really feels like an opera house, and maybe one with a more traditional take. No stabs at modernity. I am ponying up the money to see an opera and gee-for-socks I want to get an opera! Tradition! Gilt boxes! Fancy clothes! It was a fine place with pretty strong acoustics, but it didn't feel like opera. Apparently in this regard I am a firm traditionalist. Who'd a guessed?

Welcome welcome

So these are the new digs. This should be home for this little bloggy for quite a while, I can't see myself switching forums again any time soon. Tumblr, among so many other problems, does not feature any sort of export function, which means all those old posts were basically copied and pasted over. If you are curious and look back through the old posts, they will look kind of rough, but I just wanted to get it all done so I can get back to writing new things.

For the moment there are just a few fellow bloggies that I follow, but they are all worth reading. I've got the Time is my Dad's retirement blog, Pickles and Bleu is Tammy's work, and Marshmallow Fights is run by Nate and hosts some of his writing and some collaborative top 25 songs lists created by family and friends. There should be new content up shortly as everyone interested can send Top Ten Movies lists to either Nate or my Dad to be posted.

Back into regular content on Friday with our reactions to the opera. Thanks for staying with me.

Hip-Hopera

We are going to see the opera Thursday! Marvel at our classiness! Other exclamations! Thursday night we are going to see Turandot.

Bulls v Blazers

Last night we went out to the Bulls game at the Rose Garden compliments of my parents. Game was pretty fun, lost by a bit, but some great plays to see. The Rose Garden was pretty enjoyable, great atmosphere, but I will say pretty miserable food. Next time we go we’ll have to rely a bit more on Dibs and soft-serve.

We have a few notes for everyone out there:

Whenever Rudy Fernandez was taking free throws, a Bulls fan behind us would yell “soccer player!” Not sure why. The best we can figure is that in the program handed out at the doors it had an interview with Rudy and they asked what other sports he liked. He answered soccer and tennis.

There was a dad in front of us and he was fist-pumping and air-punching up a storm. Some incredibly ridiculous moves.

On the jumbotron, they showed a probably 12 year old kid wearing a Bulls jersey, who immediately responded with what would have been a motion with one hand underlining the Bulls on the front of his jersey. However, he did it much too high, so it looked more like a motion conveying the message of ‘we will serve your head on a platter.’ Creepily hilarious.

If you renew your season tickets before March 1st, you will get a Wesley Matthews “3-goggle” bobblehead. This is when you basically make the OK sign with each hand and hold them up to your eyes with the other three fingers pointing out.

I am definitely getting tired of the accopella trend. Every college now has one and you have to see them everywhere. They did both the national anthem and the halftime show. Most of these groups buy their arrangements and so most of the time you hear the same four songs as before. I’m tired of seeing a new group do the same songs in the same way. It really irritates me.

And that’s the news. Lots of fun, bunch of people out in colors and jerseys, and definitely a lively crowd. Sadly, I didn’t have my camera with me. We’ll just have to do it again to get some pictures.

Moved

We are Post-Move! Sunday we dropped off our keys to the old place and we have everything in our new place, although we are still days away from getting everything unpacked and put away.

Honestly, this was one of the easiest moves I’ve been a part of. This is a bit of a surprise since this was to be a move that included only three people, six flights of stairs, no parking and narrow streets for a uhaul, and a shortage of boxes. HOWEVER, we are pretty much the best. By that I mean we were undoubtedly lucky. We only needed two trips with the truck and everything but the mattress and box spring fit in the tiny elevator. Amazing news. Couch, shockingly heavy and razor-edged entertainment stand, dressers, all were wedged into that elevator after much twisting and spinning.

Most of the cussing out the sky came on Sunday. Cleaning the old apartment went well enough, and shopping was fine, but took forever. We were the most tired upon our return, but I still needed to run the bikes over from the old apartment, which took several trips as I forgot the keys to the bike locks like a champ.

Anyway, the new place is getting pretty high marks so far. We are still trying to find a good solution for bike storage, but other than that things are going well. The kitchen is like an actual kitchen, water pressure is good, the amount of space feels amazing, and we get natural light. Who’d a thought that would be a plus?

There will be more words soon, but this is a start and I have been hungry pretty much nonstop since the move. Don’t really know why, but there you go. So I’m off to second breakfast. Back shortly.

Soccer

So I recently got into a pretty big soccer phase. Not that I’m playing, which is probably the basis for all of this, but I’m reading and watching much more than usual. I just finished Seeing Red by Graham Poll and am currently working through the veritable tome called The Ball is Round.

The former is a memoir/autobiography of sorts by the recently retired English referee who famously awarded three yellow cards before sending a player off in the 2006 World Cup. It deals with this along with much of his career in England and Europe, the players he met, the coaches he dealt with, and so on. Pretty interesting. Since we’re all over here and not there, and it’s pretty tough to get any sort of consistent coverage on European soccer, I don’t really know much about the personalities of the clubs and players. I’ve seen most of them play, but don’t really know much else. As a comparison, I know that Ron Artest sometimes drives his kids to school in an Indy car, that Pablo Sandoval’s nickname is Kung Fu Panda, and that Kevin Garnett is insane about peanut butter and jelly man.

The latter book is one of the major histories of the sport. I just now got into the 1900s in England and Scotland. The last chapter has been about the professionalization of soccer, the Irish Question, and the labor struggles of the emerging working class. I’m about 8 chapters in, which Kindle tells me is about 7%. Long, long way to go.

Besides all that, I’ve been digging deeper into Aston Villa (the English team I’ve been doing my best to follow the last four years), trying to get into the Spanish league with Villareal, and watching clips from the last World Cup on youtube. Seriously, how unreal was Donovan?

A few important notes:

-First of the English league will from here out be referred to as the EPL.

-The EPL uses a relegation system which is eminently entertaining. The three worst teams in the league get dropped down to what is essentially the minor league and the top three of those teams are bumped up. Would add a little more urgency to some of the owners here when they realized how much less money the Timberwolves would be making if they got dropped to the D-League.

-It’s interesting that timekeeping in soccer is basically a secret. The major US sports all have scoreboards with clocks. Soccer has only the referees watch to go by.

-The book I’m reading points out something pretty interesting, “The rarity of not only goals, but clear scoring opportunities, is anathema not merely because it appears, at first sight, tedious, but more profoundly because it allocates such a large role to chance in determining the outcome of the game. The enormous number of scoring chances in basketball and the immense length of the baseball season are two devices that ensure, over both individual games and entire seasons, that luck evens out and other factors prevail.” I do enjoy this.

-In fact, one of the biggest arguments I hear for March Madness fits the same idea. Since it’s a one and done tournament rather than best of seven series, you get upsets and upsets are exciting.

-Some day I will not only get cable, but cable that includes the EPL. It is super frustrating to be this excited about a league you can’t really follow.

Anyway, I need to start playing again. I think that’s the moral here. I’ll do my best to keep it limited, but I’ve been pretty starved to talk to somebody about soccer and I may end up posting more things that are basically just for me.

Sorry for the rambling.

One More Week

Just one more week before our move to a bigger and better place. One more week of taking stuff over to the Good Will, one more week of leaving furniture in front of the building, and just one more week of living in our fortress made of boxes. It is insane realizing how much stuff you own when you try to pack it all up. It’s not like we’re pack rats, and we haven’t had all that much time together to accumulate, but we still have a bunch of junk. It just expands and fills whatever extra space you have.

Anyway, we start Saturday morning and it will probably take several years to complete. Then it will be a newer and bigger fortress made of boxes for a while until we actually get everything unpacked.

Oh, and don’t you worry about any of this. We are doing things in an intelligent and orderly fashion to minimize work. None of our boxes are labeled, there is some definite mixing of rooms with some pans going in the same box as the dvds and there are some books in pretty much every box so far.

As for the move itself, there is an elevator in the new place, which is great news. However, some things are not going to fit in said elevator. Mattress, box springs, couch. These things will be going up stairs to the sixth floor. Wooooo.

So there will be plenty of pictures of cussing, laying on the ground, and maybe even one of me on my knees screaming “why?!” to a gray and pitiless sky. We shall see.

Regardless, it’ll be good times and I’ll keep you posted.

Fancy Foods Week

Some important disclaimers: (1) it is hardly a week when truthfully I am only doing two days of fancy foods, and (2) they are hardly fancy foods.

Nonetheless! We have approached this week with gusto and grocery shopping and decided on two new recipes to try. Yankee Pot Roast Stew and Orange Chicken in Pasta. Oh, and maybe some beer bread later on.

Yankee Pot Roast Stew was a successful venture on Tuesday and one that will be repeated. We haven’t done much so far in terms of soups or stews and this one was a long time coming to beat back the winter weather (not our winter of course, but boy it sure was a cold week in the midwest. Don’t know how we survived!). It was a pretty simple recipe, but it was my first ever 2+ hour cooking experience.

Some facts about myself as a cook:

-I am terrible at planning ahead. I’ve been quick enough about everything that this has never really hurt any of the meals I’ve cooked, but it does make it more stressful. I like to start the first step before preparing ingredients for the later ones. So for this stew, I had three minutes of cooking time in which to chop an onion, cube some beef, and find the spices I needed.

-I tend to be intuitive in my cooking. I don’t measure carefully and after I learn a recipe I measure less and less while just throwing in what I feel would be the right amounts. Again, this has surprisingly failed to blow up in my face. Even though I don’t have a ton of experience cooking and don’t understand how flavors work together, I can only remember one or two dishes that turned out badly, and those were more cases of cooking things incorrectly or letting something go too long.

-Truthfully, this matches how I write pretty accurately. Not that I write haphazardly or without proper support, but I do generally start writing and build my papers out from wherever I happen to start. I don’t know how writing has always been my strong point in school.

-Similarly, I have no idea why I’m not a terrible cook.

As for Orange Chicken and Pasta, that is on the docket for tomorrow and I will be sure to pass on any cooking fiascos that prove the above points false.

Good luck to any other fancy food weeks out there!

Christmastime

I think we have reached the end of our Christmas decorations. There was talk of snowflakes and a few other things, but I’m pretty sure we have exhausted our creative spark with construction paper this year. Our first tree did not last long and was pretty weird, but kinda great. Started our decorations off with some class to be sure.

Since then we have put our hands to work on still more string lights in what has become a traditionally haphazard way. The encircle our apartment and even double back at certain points as if we just couldn’t figure out what to do with them. Add to this the strange mix of white and colored lights without any discernible pattern and you have a measure of our style. And then there is our tree. Somehow, even though we had complete control over how it would look, this tree leans more than any I have ever had. It is not at all straight and tilts to the right pretty hard, but we love it anyway.

So there you have it. Maybe someday we will use materials that aren’t scotch tape and construction paper. Even a glue stick would be a huge boost. But this is the theme for our first apartment and it suits us well.

Hope everyone is feeling the season!

Maybe in some small way this helps. At the very least it must help your self-esteem whenever you look at your decorations. They must have had more planning than these.

Merry Christmastime

McBeth Family Thanksgiving

Hello again. Finals have come and gone (lucky me as all of my professors were of the mind to put finals the last week of class rather than during finals week) and I am back to writing. First up on the list is our trip out east, well, I guess everything is out east from here, but I’ll use East to mean ole PA.

This was our first shared major holiday. We’ve done New Years and Arbor Day, but never one of the big ones that have so many traditions attached. So Thanksgiving. Started off with a rather dismal red eye flight that will probably not be repeated. We left the apartment at 8pm and arrived at the McBeths around 3pm. Lovely. With the changeover in Houston around 4am and the millions of screaming babies, this was not one of my favorites. But we made it. Woo! Cheers abound!

Maybe its because of this flight and lack of sleep, but everything hereafter gets a little bit jumbled, so I’ll forgo a day-by-day.

Most importantly for Thanksgiving, the food. Turkey was had, but after that the field was wide open with new options. There were candied yams that involved a lot of marshmallow, baked corn, green beans with bacon, potatoes, stuffing, cranberry tube, and probably a few things I’m forgetting at the moment. There was also both pie and cake. How great is that? Also important to note is that all of these things were great as leftovers. Very crucial.

We also went out to the ever-favored german restaurant in Hagerstown for Sean’s bday, which was as fantastic as ever. True, it is my only experience with German food, but I am positive I would be let down if I tried something similar at a different place. They do food right.

We also spent a day out and about at a pretty sweet model train setup at the Hagerstown Train Room and Museum, which was pretty sweet. Their Christmas set up is pretty intricate and it took a while tracking down all of the moving pieces, finding King Kong on one of the buildings. After that we headed over to see Harry Potter.

The other big event was Thanksgivingston, which was the Saturday following at the Wilkenings’ house and is a bit of a tradition amongst Sean and his friends. More great food, some ridiculously good pies and a pumpkin cheesecake that was by far my favorite.

All in all these were very good things, fun new traditions that will take some getting used to, but are also pretty exciting.

Great times and thanks to everybody out East!