dr4b | Entries tagged with books

I felt sort of bummed out last night and tonight, so I went out and bought a shitload of books. My travels took me through two Half Price Books and a Barnes & Noble, with a stop at Chipotle for dinner along the way.

I guess the good part is that I spent enough to get the Half Price Books 2006 calendar, which means COUPONS! Whee!

( What I bought, if you care, which you don't )

Anyway, the problem is that I already had about five books in my queue before going shopping for more. Oh well. Book shopping rules. I'll have to find some time to scour the east-side Half Prices one of these days. I still wonder how many books I read in 2005. I'm seriously guessing it at around 40; I should have kept better track. I want to drive down to Powell's one of these days, too.

I finally bothered making a "books" icon. It sort of sucks but it'll do until I figure out something better.

Oh, and by the way, does anyone want a free copy of Pro Football Prospectus 2005? Jonah Keri gave me a copy when I was at that Baseball Prospectus event a few weeks back, and well, I can't seem to find anyone who likes football and actually reads books about it, so otherwise, it'll probly go to Half Price next time I make a book run.

So, last night I was going to write a short blurb on Marinerds about Hugh "Losing Pitcher" Mulcahy, to honor Ryan Franklin's non-tender, but then when looking through books for notes about lousy Phillies pitchers, was reminded of the even worse luck and worse talent pitcher Jack Nabors, who pitched for the Philadelphia Pathetics in 1916. There's this great story about Nabors, well on his way to a record-setting awful 1-20 season, who was pitching in Boston one day, and supposedly went into the ninth inning holding a 1-0 lead and a no-hitter -- only to have a set of mishaps like walks and errors lead the Red Sox into tying the game 1-1 with a runner on third, so Nabors deliberately threw a wild pitch 20 feet over the plate, letting the runner score and ending the game at 2-1, "because these guys are never going to get me another run, and if you think I'm going to sit out here and pitch another eight innings in this summer heat, you've got to be crazy."

Great story, isn't it? Except the thing is... it didn't happen that way. Last night I noticed that I couldn't find a record of any game that came close to matching this description on Retrosheet, and my suspicion was that it was actually the game where they lost 3-2, but Retrosheet doesn't have play-by-plays or box scores for 1916, just the final scores and starting pitchers.

This morning, on the way to work, I stopped in at the library, briefly looked around baseball books with no luck, and then asked a clerk, "I need to access a newspaper that would have the box score of a baseball game played between the Boston Red Sox and Philadelphia Athletics on June 24, 1916. Can you help me?" Fortunately, we found the New York Times sports section for that day, and sure enough, the box score indicated that this Nabors anecdote, which I have seen in at least three books, is not factually correct, for various reasons. I left the library with a big grin on my face and a box score printout in my grubby little hands. Seeing the printout sitting on my desk at work all day, I couldn't wait to get home and write this article detailing my find. Man, I'm a goddamn dork, aren't I? On the other hand, I actually really sort of enjoy hunting down these historical discrepancies in baseball books -- only a month ago I also found several in a 1980's Phillies book I was reading as well. Something tells me that being a fact checker for a book publisher doesn't pay as well as being a software engineer...

Um, so anyway, work was okay -- at one point Rich and I were working on releasing some code, but we needed Jack's help, so we were going to call him since he was taking the day off, and I said "Wait, wait, if you call him you HAVE to say happy birthday," so Rich calls him like "Hey, Jack! We just wanted to wish you happy birthday! Well... er, actually, no, we wanted to ask you about these files."

After work I went to

samildanach and

llynecat's apartment for Jack's birthday party though. I met their down-the-hall neighbor Jason and we went and picked out some board games, and in the meantime,

spazzychic (who I had never met but knew of for a while) and

aquatwo (talk about WEIRD COINCIDENCES, though I hadn't seen him in forever!) showed up, and we ended up playing Pit for a couple of hands, during which time Jack's sister Peggy showed up. And after that there was pizza-eating and we watched the movie Shaun of the Dead, which was very funny, but I don't think I'll ever actually watch it again (I don't deal so well with all the blood and guts scenes). After that we watched the X-Men trailer, and I was feeling sort of zoned-out, so I came home.

I logged into PP and wanted to just zone out more and puzzle, so I asked Jarrett if I could sail with him -- he was doing a long trade run -- and it was EXACTLY what I needed. I'm #5 in the ocean in Carpentry again, biznatches.

I find myself extremely fortunate in that the laziest choice for lunch for me at work is the salad bar place. Well, I suppose there's the salad bar place and the sandwich place, but I feel like I have more control over my lunch at the salad bar place and healthier choices. Either way, they don't require exiting the office building and walking into the cold. I can only imagine how bad it'd be to work in a building that only had something like, say, a McDonald's in the lobby.

Speaking of cold, my throat started feeling sore this morning and got worse as the day went on. This sucks. I have to SING tomorrow night, dammit.

I'm reading Goose Gossage's autobiography and it's the funniest thing I've ever picked up. Laughed aloud three times on the bus ride home tonight, even.

I also came to the conclusion today that John Olerud is the Mark Jensen of baseball players. I can't decide whether this is a bigger compliment to Jensen or to Olerud.

Tonight I went to the gym with Megan and Heidi for a bit, but since my left arm is shot from volleyball and my throat is sore, I couldn't really do a lot of lifting or running, so I mostly just did some stretching and some light lifting. I came home and hung out chatting on PP for a bit. Now, I should go write more, or sleep, or both.

I wanted to get sushi for dinner tonight, but I was too tired when I got home. So I had pitas and hummus instead... and by the time I was done, I felt awake and alert enough that I wanted to go get sushi. Except, I was full. Dammit.

A week or two ago I reviewed a book on Marinerds, Ninety Feet From Fame by Mike Robbins -- quite glowingly, as it was a phenomenally entertaining and informative book -- and today I got an email from the author, who had read my blog and was actually thanking me for the positive review. ("You'd be surprised, but most of the comments I get about this book are because (sad but true) I accidentally put the wrong name for the 1960 Pirates manager on page 8.") Very bizarre but cool -- now I just have to hope that the guy whose book I slammed the other week doesn't write me an angry email :)

George and Chris are in town for the weekend, and I have been fortunate to get to hang out with them a decent amount yesterday and today. They kidnapped me from work for an excursion to Soup Daddy (and I noticed the "east coast sandwich shop" that Jason was telling me about -- Oren, we should go there sometime), and then in the evening there was a larger excursion of people to Elliott's, which involved a lot of oysters for everyone else, and some damn tasty fish and whatnot. Also, I stopped by Pirate's Plunder and holy shit there's a ton of stuff there I'd buy if I was feeling particularly rich.

Today, we hung out for dinner in the evening after they got back from hiking, and we all ended up watching Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, and everyone drank a lot, except me.

In the afternoon today I went downtown and hung out with Ryan for a few hours. We went to Elliott Bay and geeked out about baseball. He has better stories than I do, so it was fun. I got a few books, notably a super-awesome "Annotated Casey At The Bat", which is hilarious, including parodies of the original poem including "Ahab at the Helm" by Ray Bradbury.

My apartment is horrendously messy and I'm really uninspired to bother cleaning it. Bleh.

I am totally totally totally not supposed to be up this late... I'm supposed to go over to Microsoft tomorrow morning to help people playtest stuff for CMU Puzzle Hunt... but but but the Hawks-Marines game 3 of the Pacific League Second Stage playoffs just started and the Marines could sweep the whole damn PL playoffs and Shunsuke Watanabe is pitching for Chiba and he's a submariner and so cute and... *head explodes* かっとばせマリーンズ!

It's funny, I feel like I posted here a lot this week but didn't actually write anything that happened to me. That's mostly because, well, not much happened. Monday was choir and lifting, Tuesday was PP and errands, Wednesday was volleyball, Thursday was an office party and D&D, and Friday was gym, and that's really about it, aside from catching bits of American and Japanese baseball playoffs on TV. My life is dreadfully boring. That's why I have to sit around writing baseball humor columns.

Thursday was kind of funny, because we had this office party from 3-7pm at the Garage Billiards & Bowling, which I'd forgotten about. There was a lot of food and it was really good, but other than that, it was just pool (two tables, always taken), shuffleboard (boring), and bowling. I bowled about twenty frames for fun, but ducked out for the intra-office competition games. Sad thing is, I'm a decent bowler, but left-handed, so lane bowling balls always screw up my wrist, and this time was no different... and even if I'd remembered about the party, I don't think I would have dragged my 10-pound bowling ball on the bus to work, y'know?

Between lifting Monday, vball Wednesday, bowling Thursday, and lifting today, my left arm is quite pissed off at me, and I can't help but wonder if a wrist brace might not be a bad investment.

Thursday night D&D was more hack'n'slash. We fought an iron golem. It was really dreadfully annoying and repetitive, just a matter of endurance and dice rolls. On the other hand, I FINALLY DISINTEGRATED SOMETHING! Not the golem, but a monk that was attacking us as well. Wheeee! We all levelled; unfortunately, I'm really nonplussed by 8th level wizard spells, to be honest. Empowered Disintegrate would be amusing, but probably not worth it since things always either save or have SR anyway.

Tonight after work I went to the gym with Megan and Heidi, but since we are all sort of doing different workouts these days, they ended up hanging out with Eric the Trainer and some other girl in the mat room, and I ended up spending about 20-25 minutes in the cardio room walking on the treadmill and riding the stationary bikes... because the Chicago-Anaheim ALCS game was on TV. I'm not just a tool, I'm the whole damn toolbox. Jon Garland pitched a complete game win for the White Sox, which was vaguely entertaining.

After the gym, I came home, and did laundry, watched Major League II (would you believe I'd never seen it before? That Rube Baker character was perfect in so many ways!), practiced some choir music, researched webhosting solutions some more, and checked in on PP (heh, I bought the "Charming Carp" sloop off Dolphine on a whim). A boring, but relaxing Friday night.

I'm about halfway done reading Memories of Empire, and I rue the publisher, for they have done an impressively bad job with typos and text breaks and whatnot.

I suppose I've whined enough about being boring, and my laundry is just about dry, and I'm going to sleep as soon as I get to hear Fukuura's cheer song again, so I might as well sign off here. (Heh... a minute later Fukuura hits a single to right to drive in another run. 2-0 Chiba. Yesssssssss. You SUCK, Arakaki!)

After trying to deny all week that my nose was getting stuffy and sniffly, I think I might as well just admit it -- I have a mild cold. Yuck. Right now it's just the sniffles, I hope it doesn't get much worse. Explains the braindeadness, though.

This morning started off with me waking up with a huge stuffy headache, as the phone was ringing. It was a recruiter from Nintendo trying to tell me about a 6-month contract job doing Japanese-English localization of C++ SDK documentation (which pretty much fits all of my skillsets). I stuffily, sleepily, and oh so professionally replied, "I'm sowwy, bud youwe cawing aboud fibe munts doo lade, I habba job now," as I politely wormed out of the conversation so I could find some Tylenol. Anyway, why do people only call you with great job opportunities once you *have* a job? Sheesh.

There was some major traffic mishap today around rush hour, and all the buses got messed up. My original plan for the evening involved taking the 355 home at 6pm, grabbing my car, driving back downtown to meet up with

nykkel and his girlfriend Pam at Todai for Nyk's birthday dinner, then going to West Seattle to see the Astros-Braves game with

oren. Unfortunately, when I checked the bus availabilities, my bus was going to be 20 minutes late, and any other bus going my way was going to be similarly backed up. So I ditched going home, and hung out downtown for another hour. I went to the 5th Ave Theater to inquire about tickets for The King And I, and ended up with a 6th row center seat for tomorrow night's performance.

Then I went to Pacific Place; wasted time in Barnes & Noble for a little while. On a whim, I decided to go check out the science fiction section to see if they had

ketsugami's book. They DID! Man, you have no idea how weird it is to be standing in a bookstore and see a novel written by your former D&D DM... I was going to hold off buying it until I was in Pittsburgh and make him sign it, but I decided to get it today, so maybe I'll actually read it before then. We'll see. By the way, Django, it was pretty funny, because the bar code didn't actually work when the cashier scanned the book, and she had to enter it manually. But, they did have three copies on the shelf at B&N here in Seattle. Just thought you might like to know :)

Anyway, dinner was fun, and it was good to catch up. I hadn't seen Nykkel in like... umm... *thinks* since May, or so, I think? Geez. Funny how that happens when your friends go off and get girlfriends. It was nice to meet Pam at last, too.

Afterwards, I did go over to Oren's, where we heckled the Clemens-Smoltz matchup. And the Braves kicked butt. I feel horrendously guilty rooting for the Braves, I do, but man, the Phillies were so damn close this year, if it weren't for those meddling Astros. It's funny, Clemens has been a great pitcher this year, but I swear, he's failed in a lot of clutch games. It's sort of odd. Anyway, I had the following impressions from the game:

1. John Smoltz looks just like

captain_squid.
2. Marcus Giles looks just like my friend Dave Kowalski, who I haven't seen in way too long. I wonder if he's still in Fukushima...
3. It's really appropriate to hear them playing "Thank God I'm a Country Boy" by John Denver during the seventh inning stretch in a game between a Georgia team and a Texas team.
4. Half of the guys playing on the Braves are young enough that I could have babysat them when I was in high school.

Also, today Mariners Morsels gave my baseball blog a shout-out in a "Three totally sweet Mariners blogs you should read" post:

Deanna has totally established herself as the M's version of Batgirl. You'll find a wide variety of things to entertain you, including Song Parodies, In-depth Game Reports (from someone who was actually *there* most of the time!), and even pictures. We'll forgive her for being a Phillies fan (not that there's really anything wrong with that -- though my favorite NL team is the Cardinals), but it's totally cool having the male-dominated M's blogosphere represented from the female perspective, and from a self-professed Nerd (of which I totally can relate).

Whee. That made my day. :)

Today, we played softball again. This time it was just Josh, Megan, Jarrett, Ficus, and myself. I am really into batting, and I think I'm getting better at it again, as I remember how to swing. On fielding, I'm pretty decent at getting grounders, but my arm is still too weak to play any position but second base. I'm not so great at catching pop flies, and there's that arm problem, so I don't foresee playing the outfield. I'm not really tall enough to be a good target at first base, and I don't have the arm range to play shortstop or third, and I don't have the accuracy to be a pitcher, so I'm thinking aside from maybe catcher, it'll be second base for me. I'll be like the first left-handed second baseman ever!

We may end up playing in a league as soon as next week, and for 6 Wednesdays in a row. Scary. I hope we go to a batting cage sometime before then.

Megan has no hair.

I ran a few errands after softball, and I have been spending the rest of the evening on something creative (what else is new?). I should go to sleep.

I started reading "Now Pitching, Bob Feller" today. I'm three chapters in and it's already awesome. I must freak people out on the bus sometimes when I have my nose buried in a baseball biography book and there's just this huge contented grin on my face.

This is a useful post about the upcoming Seattle bus changes when the tunnel closes.

Yesterday I went to the east side and hung out with

bpr. I went shopping on my own first around Bellevue Square a little, and then got Brian and we went scouring Half Price Bookses -- first the one in Redmond, then the one in Bellevue. Found lots of CDs, a movie or two, and a few books as well. Brian found a Legend of the Five Rings book that he'd been trying to find for several months, so that was cool. We ended up getting dinner at Red Robin and I tried to show him Settlers the Card Game but our food showed up too fast. Hung out for a while, then came home.

Today I finally showed Jack the code I'm working on at work. I feel like I'm trying to write C++ code in Perl, which is kind of funny, and I even had to generate Doxygen-like stuff for my functions so I could keep track of them. But anyway. Jack's going to help me, which is cool.

After work I went to the gym by myself because this week is all messed up, and then I walked the 2 miles home and stopped by Safeway and did laundry and cleaned up the apartment a little bit and watched Napoleon Dynamite.

The movie was pretty funny. I understand a lot of quotes now, and why everyone at Shea Stadium had "Vote for Pedro" shirts. The scariest moment was when they played Pat Borders's at-bat music, and then the big orange van pulls up to the house and HOLY SHIT PAT BORDERS STEPS OUT. Okay, no, Lazlo Hollyfeld steps out, but it's just as disturbing.

okay, and I just had to go and do this Photoshop. I know it's awful, but...
( vote for Felix )

Thursday: Gym with Heidi; just did leg weights, and a little bit of treadmill. Afterwards I went shopping, kinda, well, I went to Half Price Books, and couldn't find any of the stuff I wanted, so I decided to just not buy anything. Grabbed dinner at Chipotle after that and sat around writing that baseball HP parody. Sailed some hemp oil in PP -- this turning the game into Animal Crossing is doing wonders for the apothecary business, lemme tell you.

Friday: Went to Angels-Mariners game. Added 2 more signatures to my poster for a total of 7. Went alone, ended up sitting next to a guy about my age and his mom. After a bunch of conversation spins, it turns out that the guy used to work at Quarters, the arcade in Kirkland (so he remembered a lot of the oldskool Seattle DDR people), and he even currently works at a videogame company, heh. I ended up talking with them for most of the game, we geeked out about videogames and baseball, and it was a lot of fun.

(For the question Megan will ask: no, the guy was wearing a wedding ring. For the question the DDR people will ask: I think he said his name was Ryan?)

Oh yeah, and the Angels won 9-4 after the Mariners bullpen imploded in the 8th inning. Vladimir Guerrero hit a home run so far I thought it might actually go out of Safeco Field. Scot Shields is the nicest baseball player I have ever seen in my entire life; he kept making a point of giving baseballs to little children, and he also stayed around and signed stuff for ninety billion people.

Chris Snelling may be out for the season. I cry.

I drove to Northgate in the morning and parked in the Target/BestBuy garage for the day, taking the 41 bus downtown to work. This was so the cupcakes I baked for D&D could sit in my car and not bake even more under the sun, and then I could go to the gym after work and then D&D... except the pool at the gym wasn't open due to like, the roof tiles falling or something, so we didn't actually go swimming, and I stayed at work until like 6:30pm instead.

D&D was good though, and the cupcakes survived being in the cool car pretty well, and I frosted them at M&J's house. Also, I think spell focus items can be really obnoxiously stupid. There's no reason for the focus for Mordenkainen's Sword, seriously, and Justin agreed with me and allowed me to cast it without.

"King Felix" Hernandez started the M's-Tigers game in Detroit today (and sadly got the loss). He was the youngest pitcher to start a Mariners game since like... 1984. I started working on a filk song about him, of course, to the tune of "Prince Ali" from Aladdin, an' I posted it to Marinerds but I won't bother posting it here until it's done. Or something.

I'm almost done reading Pam Postema's book about when she was a minor league umpire for the late 70's and early 80's. It's really goddamn good.

Whee, happy birthday

eub, yo.

I got here at 10am yesterday due to going to the Everett Aquasox game and taking ninety years to bus back.

I got here at 10:30am today, because I stayed up until 5am finishing Harry Potter. Sigh. Well, next week I will endeavor to get in by 9:30 every day. There won't be baseball so it'll be easier.

It would be too much of a pain for me to remember who has Harry Potter posts I should read now, so if you want me to read a Harry Potter post of yours, please comment and link it.

( spoilers, arr )
All in all, though, I enjoyed reading this one a LOT more than HP5; looking back on that entry I remember being so horrendously angry and pissed off that I threw the book across the room. This time, I put the book down, stared at the ceiling, and tried to get to sleep amidst all the swirling thoughts in my head as I thought about what to expect in book 7.

Today I made Benoit leave the apartment and come downtown with me. He wandered around coffeehouses and such doing work while I was at work. We had lunch at Soup Daddy though, which made me VERY happy because I love that place so much. I guess I had a good time at work too, though I feel pretty dumb for trying to track down a bug or two all day which came down to "deanna forgot to uppercase her filenames" and "Tandem's file storage is retarded".

After work we rode the bus home and then went over to the Vertical World climbing place, where we met up with

mh75, Josh,

meerkat299,

eub,

katybeth, and

sethml. Everyone else climbed a whole lot and I sat around watching and talking and going "I don't understand how on earth you can stand on those things!"

Yar, but my problems with rock climbing are:

1) afraid of heights
2) no balance
3) bad arches and feet
4) no arm strength

Oh, and umm... 5) not exceptionally skinny. I swear that every woman I saw there was in great shape, and I felt huuuuge. Though I mean, I am working on the weight and the arm strength. It's just going to take a while to get there...

Oh! This morning on my way to the bus, my Harry Potter book showed up and the building manager gave it to me. To my credit, I didn't open it on the bus or at work; I opened it on the way home and then decided "I don't have time to read this while entertaining a houseguest". I rule. Unfortunately, this means I still can't read any of your posts about it, heh.

No, I don't have the book. I preordered it from Amazon but didn't choose the "deliver on July 16, bitches" deal that everyone else did.

I do have a Benoit, who finally got here safe and sound after USAirways decided to delay his flight like ninety times.

I also got to see Justin and Colleen's house. It is clean, which is scary.

Hiking in a few hours. Oops on the "going to sleep early" thing, but you know how it is catching up with people you haven't seen in a billion years. Charlie, you have to visit sometime too.

Rafael Palmeiro got his 3000th hit tonight and I wasn't there :(

Arr.

Last night I got home around 9, and I crashed around 9:45, which is why it's 7:30am and I've been awake for an hour already.

Not much to say, though. Yesterday morning's chai came from Joelle's Cafe, across the street from IDX. This was the first place they actually asked if I wanted nonfat milk or soy milk or whatnot, so I got nonfat -- the result is pretty much the same generic chai every other coffeehouse has. Dammit, I want Taste of India to open a chai stand downtown.

(Yes, I really do pass by at least ten different coffeehouses in a 5-block walk from the bus to work. Why do you ask?)

I had a program I was working on at work. Jack asked me how long it'd take. At the time he asked, I was still getting my head around it, so I said "I'll be done end of tomorrow?" Then I actually started writing the script, and I was done by the end of the day. That's a good feeling. It's frustrating to be in a stage where I know I don't know enough to really be effective, but it's kinda cool to still be doing okay despite that.

Also, there was cake.

After work I went to Fuji Sushi with Drew and Jason, since I hadn't been there in forever and I had this sadistic desire to make Jason walk uphill from Pioneer Square to there. No, just kidding. It was fun, and Drew and I had some stuff to catch up on anyway.

Then I walked across town to catch my bus home, and I voraciously devoured another 50 pages of "The Ball" on the ride home... and then I crashed. Boom.

Has anyone else read anything by Daniel Paisner? This book is amazing -- not just from a baseball perspective, since it isn't really about baseball, but it's more about American culture and the psychology of wanting to "own part of the action", and the controversy that stemmed over the people who caught and kept home run balls from the 1998 season. I'm really wondering if this guy is always this good -- just like when I read Moneyball, I wondered about Michael Lewis, since that was such an amazing book as well.

Well, I started off the day by having a semi-embarrassing run-in with another person who's staying at the apartment for the weekend (he apparently arrived while I was taking a shower, so I was walking back to the living room to get clothes and I notice there's a guy in Nalini's room. Hilarity ensues. Actually, it wasn't really that bad, I just went back to the living room, got clothes, got dressed, and went and chatted about machine learning and stuff for a bit).

But then I went to the Strand bookstore, which was pretty cool, stopping at H&H bagels on the way to grab lunch. I rooted around in the bookstore basement for an hour or two looking at their baseball books, and I found a couple really good ones I'd never heard of before (a Goose Gossage autobiography, an Orel Hershiser autobiography, a book called "Tales from a Yankees Batboy"), and then I found the Warren Cromartie book about his time playing in Japan! So that was pretty cool.

Nick called me after that, so I headed back here (taking the 1 train this time, har har) and we headed out to give our regards to Broadway. We went by the Gershwin Theater to try to do the "lottery" for Wicked tickets, but there were a ton of people there, so we didn't get lucky. Instead, we headed over to a theater around the corner and got tickets to Chicago instead, since Nick gets an IBM discount. Then we grabbed dinner at the Roxy Delicatessen, which was expensive, but dude, I haven't had a real corned beef sandwich at a real deli in a bazillion years.

Chicago the musical was really very good. Their set was kinda wacky -- they had the band set up like a nightclub jazz band on stage, and everyone acted out scenes around it. But, the singing and dancing was great, the musical itself was very entertaining -- the only thing I thought was odd is that I felt like you don't really get a feel for Velma's character in the musical, not the same way you do in the movie. (I'd never seen the stage version before.)

I think that was actually the first broadway musical I'd ever actually seen ON BROADWAY, though I've seen ninety billion musicals in my lifetime. So, cool. We might try to go do the Wicked lottery again one of these days, or try to catch The Producers, or something. I may have to just come back to NYC in several months to see musicals, maybe.

We walked around Times Square for a while after that. The Toys 'r' Us there is awesomely frightening. Nick bought a painting from a street artist. We tried to find a place to have cheesecake for dessert but mostly failed. Then we came home (again taking the correct train).

Monday actually not much to say. Work, then errands and laundry and packing.

Tuesday, work and then gym with Megan. My arms still hurt from volleyball on Sunday. Then lastminute packing and then going to the airport, where I ran into

thatmathchick and her guy since they were also heading to JFK on the same flight as me. I hadn't seen Deb in forever so it was good to catch up, though the sad part is that part of her trip here is going to David Rochberg's wedding, which I was unaware of, which makes me sad since I used to be such close friends with Dave back in the day, and now here I am not even knowing he's getting married. It made me all sad, like when you get this feeling in the pit of your stomach when you worry you've lost something important like your keys or phone or something.

The flight was fairly uneventful and I finished the Sadaharu Oh autobiography I was reading, and damn if that isn't one of the best books I've ever read. It's so bizarre to hear him talk about baseball and yet be talking about aikido and zen and swordplay and everything interspersed with it, and really entertaining. I slept off and on for the rest of the flight.

It got to JFK late, but Nick came and picked me up anyway. Yay, it's good to see Nick again, even if he sucks for not coming to Seattle. He drove me back here and I met his roomate and stuff, but then they went off to work, so now I am sitting here in his living room updating LJ and stuff and debating what to do during the day. We're gonna try to go to the Mets-Phillies game tonight, and I am psyyyyyyched.

I might just take a nap, or I might wander around here a bit. We're apparently like a block from Columbia, which is pretty cool. I'm in New York so I really ought to get bagels or pizza or something, I think.

ciole tagged me for the book meme, and oddly enough last night I actually started an effort to catalog my baseball books. I have a ton more than I thought. Heh.

1) Total number of books owned?

I am guessing about 700-800.

2) The last books I bought?

Oddly I just answered this in an entry a few days ago! :) On my Powell's run, I got the following:
The Curious Case of Sidd Finch by George Plimpton
Babe: The Legend Comes to Life by Robert Creamer
Perfect by James Buckley
Maybe I'll Pitch Forever by Satchel Paige
I Ain't No Athlete, Lady by John Kruk
Sweet Seasons: Recollections of the 1955-64 New York Yankees by Dom Forker
Slick: My Life In And Around Baseball by Whitey Ford
Now Pitching: Bob Feller, by Bob Feller
You've Got to Have Balls to Make It in This League: My Life as an Umpire by Pam Postema

3) The last book I read?

I'm trying to remember what I finished before embarking upon The Donald Honig Reader, which is what I'm in the middle of now. I think it was "Remembering Japanese Baseball" by Rob Fitts; these are both baseball oral history books and absolutely fabulous. I'm not counting books I "read through" at Powell's, nor Moneyball which I re-read 75% of on a whim the other day.

The last non-baseball books I read? Well, I read Dork Tower volumes 6 and 7 recently, but those are comic book compendiums, so I dunno if they count. I read through big sections of several technical books in the last few months, but I don't think they count either, nor D&D handbooks. So the last non-baseball novel I read through was probably The Three Musketeers, by Alexandre Dumas.

4) 5 books that mean a lot to me?

The Neverending Story, by Michael Ende. I read this when I was 7 or 8 years old, and I was so proud of myself for reading a 400-page book back then. I still have large parts of the book memorized.

Dragonlance, Legends 1-3, by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman. When I was 14 years old, Raistlin was the coolest character ever invented. Note I say Legends and not Chronicles. Chronicles 3 was the first book I ever stayed up until 8-9am reading through the entire night, but Legends meant a lot more to me.

The C Programming Language, first edition, by Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie. It's not that the book's contents are so wonderful, but the copy I have was given to me as a present by Kirk Yenerall at the end of the computer science lab course at PGSS 1993. A year later I got it signed by Kernighan when he showed up at CMU. Huge sentimental value. It's the first real programming book I owned.

Bridge in the Menagerie, by Victor Mollo. Matt or Erich gave me this book back when we all used to play bridge 200 hours a week in Donner Hall. We named Matt's stuffed bunny rabbit Rueful, even, after one of the characters in it. I just loved all of Victor Mollo's books, and this is the best one.

The Glory of Their Times, by Lawrence Ritter. This is the book that got me to stop reading everything but baseball books a few years back. It's not only an amazing baseball book, but it's also just an amazing oral history book, period. I remember when I read it, I got about 30-40 pages in and realized, "Oh crap, this book is so good I can't put it down... but worse, it's going to end sometime and I'm going to be so sad when it does!"

5) Tag 5 people and have them fill this out on their ljs:

damienroc because I keep lending him books.

wooko because he reads as much as I do and never writes in his LJ.

bhudson because it occurs to me I don't know what he likes reading.

nickjong because we used to talk about books but it's been a while.

samildanach because the original reason I talked to him at drum corps was because of a book he was reading.

I had an interview today. I think it went well? I guess I'll find out later.

It ended a little before 4pm, so I went to the library after it, and sat there reading about Roger Maris for a while. I had wanted to read the Sadaharu Oh biography I saw there last time I was there, but it wasn't there this time. They did have Warren Cromartie's biography, but I didn't notice it until I was putting back the Maris one... I guess I'll read that next time.

Walked down to the Mariners - Blue Jays game. Drew was running late so I just left him a ticket in Will Call and went in. Got my Ivar's and got up to my seat in time for lineups and everything. The guys who have the seats next to me were actually both there today, so I talked to them for a while, though I still think they think I'm some sort of freaky obnoxious girl. Drew showed up about ten minutes after the game started.

It was a great game! I ♥ PAT BORDERS! If I were Batgirl, Pat Borders would be my Boyfriend Of The Day every day, except for when... wait, I just realized, nobody else on the Mariners is really worth being Boyfriend of the Day. Yeesh. No wonder I've taken to rooting for other teams. Give me a John Olerud, a Joe Mauer, a Mark Teixeira, a Hank Blalock, a Jarrod Washburn, a Brendan Donnelly, a Jason Kendall, a Jason Varitek, a Mike Myers, hell, a Jason Bay or a Pat Burrell or a Jim Edmonds or David Eckstein... just... players I can actually care about and want to succeed! I guess I am kinda pulling for Randy Winn and Raul Ibanez this year -- they do consistently well but never really get the press for it. And I'm hoping Aaron Sele and Gil Meche can keep up their last few starts. Actually, come to think of it, Jeremy Reed is probably the best candidate for Backup Boyfriend of the Day at this point. If he continues to play like this he could very well end up AL Rookie of the Year.

Oh, so anyway, the Mariners won tonight, 3-0. Pat Borders was 2-2 and scored a run. Boone looked like a total slowpoke on the basepaths, getting caught running twice, though he did have a nice triple. Ichiro made some excellent plays, but sadly I think we're too used to those by now. However, we're not used to the Mariners winning by now, so that was nice. I need to go to another Tacoma game sometime (prolly when Oren is up here next weekend).

After the game Drew and I went to hang out with one of his friends; we sat around and ate some food and talked about 80's music and stuff. Was fun. Then Drew gave me a ride home, and I've been catching up on all the online things I ignored all day.

0900 - the time my alarm was set for

0935 - the time I actually got up

8 - the number of CDs I brought along in the car for the ride

6 - the number of hours I spent driving today from home to Redmond to Portland and back

387.7 - the number of miles I drove today

43.9 - the miles per gallon my car got along the way

6 - the number of hours we spent in Powell's Bookstore

9 - the number of books I bought

$97.10 - the amount I spent on said books

$0 - the amount of sales tax paid, hooray for Oregon

16 - the number of plates Brian and I had at Sushi Takahashi

3 - the number of cream puffs we consumed at Sushi Takahashi

( Read more... )

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Deanna

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February 2019

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Every Day an Adventure

Entries tagged with books

When the going gets tough, the TOUGH BUY BOOKS

Being a history nerd is fun. Also, Shaun of the Dead was weird.

Cold, in more ways than one

Whee!

There is no joy in Melville - mighty Ahab has struck out.

An update of more or less substance than before

A pretty good day, except for my nose

It's not just because of Chase Utley

Napoleon Who?

Jarrod Washburn is too cute for his own good

Logistics

Harry Potter aftermath

Looking up the wall

raar

Everything is better when there's cake

Canada Day (aka Nick's Birthday)

Wheeeeeee

Book Meme, almost like a Friday Five but not

MARINERS WIN!

I am a book nerd; the numbers speak for themselves

Profile

February 2019