Every Day an Adventure

On Sunday, I woke up way too late, played some pop'n, worked on some baseball research, went off to hang out with Oren. We got Chipotle for dinner and watched the first two episodes of Gokusen, which were pretty funny. Nakama Yukie owns you.

Today, despite not falling asleep until superlate, I managed to almost get up on time to make it in for the 9:30 meeting (I got in at 9:55), and Jack and I spent the day at work pair programming to finish off a program I started last week. Unfortunately I was tired and totally zonked out around 4:30pm.

In the evening I played some puzzle pirates and I went to the gym, where I did my entire lifting routine despite having done it on Friday, and I also brought a book so I could walk/jog on the treadmills for 20 minutes. I ran into some people from volleyball.

Tomorrow I would vaguely like to go try to catch the start of the Mariners caravan at IKEA since they'll have Moyer, Sherrill, and Putz there signing stuff... we'll see if I can swing that.

Today, the Mariners went and signed the cutest left-handed pitcher in the AL. Unfortunately, they signed him for something like 4 years and $37 million, but well, after the Carl Everett signing, nobody has any idea what the heck Bavasi is thinking.

Ah well. I ♥ Jarrod Washburn even if he'll most likely be a useless junkballing 36-year-old lefty by the time this contract ends. His eyes are SO BLUE! SO BLUE!

I actually spent today at work reading documentation that someone else wrote. How weird :) After work I went to the gym, ostensibly with Megan and Heidi, but I must have totally missed Megan. Heidi showed up about 15-20 minutes after me though, so we worked through a lot of weights together, and some cardio. I upped my weights on the single lat and I actually did 15 reps in EVERYTHING. Maybe it was a bad idea, but things seemed easy tonight for whatever reason. Some weeks I'm great at lifting, some weeks I'm awful at it.

The rest of the evening was spent reading up on the Washburn signing, goofing off on Puzzle Pirates a little bit (my tailor is upgraded!!!), and umm... an art project that I can't discuss right this minute. Every now and then it's really good to just sit down and draw some stuff.

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.

Today was Tuesday. I stayed at work late and went over to the 5th Avenue Theater to see their production of Sweeney Todd. Man, every theater should do Sweeney Todd at Halloween... it's just so appropriate. Anyway, the lady who played Mrs. Lovett was really quite perfect, and the guy who played Sweeney Todd was pretty good as well. Believe it or not, I've never actually *seen* a production of the show -- so in my mind it's Angela Lansbury and Len Cariou and Victor Garber and all. It's funny, I guess I'd never realized how much of an... opera, it is, really? There's not much speaking between the music. Of course, it's all very very Sondheim; I especially noticed how it had a lot of musical similarities to Into the Woods, which I'd never thought of until I saw the Johanna character singing Green Finch and Linnet Bird, and suddenly I thought: "Holy crap, it's Rapunzel!" (And of course I couldn't help but think "I bet that kid played Jack recently" when I heard Tobias sing)

Anyway, it was very good, especially "Try the Priest"; I was surprised by how few people were laughing during it, honestly.

Also, the theater had a deal in the program that said if you come back with a paid stub from a Sweeney Todd performance, you can see it a second time for just $20, sitting anywhere in the theater. I might be tempted to do that, because I'm crazy. (PS - as a note, maybe dvarin will care, I noticed that the theater has mp3s of some of the songs from Princesses on their archive page.)

And goddamnit, I still have to go back to New York and see Wicked sometime.

Man, I've seen a *lot* of Sondheim. I've really been in a "Company" mood lately, too.

Yesterday was Monday, but I don't have a lot to say about it. I didn't bother wearing any sort of costume to work, which is good, as I don't think anyone else did either. I didn't give out candy because nobody trick-or-treats in Seattle and my building doesn't allow it anyway. What did I do? I went to choir and kicked ass, and I went to the gym after that and despite a sore left arm, did lifting anyway. I also ran/walked for 15 minutes, and I got myself to run for 4.5 minutes straight, up another half minute from last week. I ran into Jen from volleyball again -- her knee is still too hurt to play, but she goes to the gym almost every day to do other stuff anyway. She had some advice for me on running with my bad knees, which was good.

In Puzzle Pirates, I've spent 225k in the last few days on portraits. No, I'm really not kidding. Since October 22nd and the "New Clothes" portraits, I've bought 15 portraits. Oh well. It's not like I have anything else to do with the poe. And I probably put WAY too much effort into coordinating amusing titles, outfits, and locations, but ah well.

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!)

An interesting way to say "Take a deep breath and sing *through* the line, you idiots," but it worked nonetheless.

Choir was decent tonight. We picked up another tenor and another bass this week. We finally rehearsed "Their Sound is Gone Out", and I kicked butt, at least compared to the rest of the tenor section. I also kicked butt on "Let All The Angels" or whatever it's called, because, well, I can hit a high A in full voice, and enjoy it, too. It's funny, I was at first sort of scared about doing all the choruses in the second section because we didn't do them last time, but I'm familiar enough with the music and can sight-read well enough to handle it. Get it? Get it? I can handle Handel. Ha! I kill me.

This was also a food-and-socializing week, so I had some food and tried socializing. Of course, I have absolutely nothing in common with anyone in the choir, so I got to listen to everyone's stories about performing Verdi's Requiem last season.

I lifted weights after choir. I decided it's better for me to lift weights after choir late on Monday than to lift on Tuesday, since then my arm will be sore for playing volleyball on Wednesday.

Also, I'm thinking of going to see The King And I at the 5th Avenue Theater sometime this weekend, most likely either Friday night or sometime on Sunday. If anyone's interested in seeing it as well, let me know. I'm *definitely* going to see the Demon Barber of Fleet Street, Sweeney Todd, which is the next play in the queue.

Oh, and I finally bothered writing some words to Scutaro (to the tune of "Sussudio"), because, like, Marco Scutaro is awesome, and he deserves a song. Unfortunately, I can't seem to find the original song on any of my tapes, so I can't quite tell if it scans the way I hear it in my head.

Also, Eli informs me that I am a Sea Slug.

I seem to be updating this every-other-day nowadays. I wonder if this is better or worse for people's friends pages?

Yesterday, Nick and I went to the Mariners game, and after a whole week in Seattle, he finally got to see the goddamn Mariners actually win a frickin' game. Even weirder, the Mariners swept the series from the Angels. Tim Salmon was there working out with the Angels though, and it was good to see him! He signed my poster. Angels poster final signature count for the year: 9. I should tally my baseball autographs in general at some point. I'm pretty proud of myself for not being completely frightened of players anymore. The sad part is, I think I've gotten around 20-30 guys to sign stuff for me, and absolutely none of them are Mariners (unless Jeff Clement counts...). I also ran into the crazy Mariners stalker lady from the airport two weeks ago! She was there with her other Mariners stalker friends, and recognized me and waved to me to come over and chat, so I did. It was pretty funny, they were saying how they'd cornered Richie Sexson earlier, and why didn't I show up before 5pm? Heh.

This morning I fell out of bed at 7:15am to take Nick back to the airport, and the dumb part is, by the time I drove him down there and drove back home, through all the traffic, and then showered and changed and got ready for work, I still didn't reach my desk until 10:15am.

I stayed at work fairly late though, and then I played volleyball tonight, after a two-week hiatus. I had a pretty good time. I served overhand for most of the night and after a rocky first game, got most of my serves over the net, even though very few would have gone past a ten-foot line. However, now I aaaaaaaaache. And tomorrow I'm going to go lift weights anyway.

Arr.

I'm pondering visiting Austin for Christmas or New Year's or something around then again, and maybe going to Pittsburgh for Thanksgiving again, depending. I suppose I'll have to talk things over with my mom when she's out here in a week or two.

Oh! And my friend Django (ketsugami, for those that don't know him) has his first published book "Memories of Empire" now orderable on Amazon, so here's the link to his book because I think it's cool! It's so exciting when someone from an old writing group is successful like this! :)

I've been blogging a lot, just not here. My life is boring, you know, but I get to pretend to be "Seattle's Bat-Girl" elsewhere. I don't have nearly enough sass or wit, though.

Monday I dragged Josh, Megan, and Ficus to the Mariners-Royals game so we could see Felix Hernandez kick butt. (As you can guess from the preceding post; I joked I'm writing a chapter after each of his starts.) Fun stuff. We hung out with some people from the local Mariners blogosphere at a bar beforehand. Jonah wore his Nippon Ham Fighters jersey. He's my hero. I was a little more outgoing this time. Whee.

Tuesday, Megan and I went to the gym to lift arm weights, and I walked home, and I did errands like food shopping, and I meant to go get a softball glove, but didn't make it in time. I wrote more story. Whee.

Wednesday, I meant to go shopping again, but didn't due to the 5 bus being like half an hour late, but I did go to the gym and played volleyball for two hours. I feel like I'm getting some of my old skills back... and I'll probly be pretty sore tomorrow :)

I've been logged into PP in the later evenings if anyone's been looking for me... though I think the apoth business will dry up again pretty soon. Arr.

Yay, samildanach is back from Scotland! Though I will probably just stay out of his way at work for a few days so he can catch up on the ninety billion things people need him to take care of.

I felt accomplished at work today because I gave up on trying to do something my way and just copied the way other people had done it. That's a lesson for me, really.

After work, rather than going to the Twins-Mariners game, I decided to head up to the gym, where I did arm weights for half an hour, and then I noticed these two guys kept wandering by with a volleyball. They seemed to be looking for more people, so I decided to go up and see if I could play. I hadn't eaten dinner so I knew it'd be a really bad idea to stay for very long, and it was already a little past 8pm by then, but I played in one game, and by the time I left we had 7 people there. They play rally scoring to 25, which is a little weird, but other than that it was kind of like CS volleyball, just with slightly older people. Also, I played pretty well, which felt good; even my sidearm serve was working really well. I left at 8:30 because 1) I was starving 2) my arms really hurt due to lifting weights and then playing 3) I was already exhausted from running around. Man, it'll be good cardio if I go back and play again, and I did promise I would... apparently they play Wednesday nights and Sunday afternoons, so I should be able to make it sometimes.

Came home. Listened to the Mariners fuck up the game, eventually losing in 14 innings. Read websites. Played some PP; they released the housing stuff today, which is going to totally turn the game into Animal Crossing, I swear. I needed to take a bunch of hemp oil down to Turtle so I could make varnish, though... eh, we'll see. Oh, and Hades has Jorvik now. How come every time I run a shop on an island, it gets taken over by Hades? I can tell you right now, I have no interest in governing Jorvik. Nor anything else in the game. I think maybe after the big buzz for furniture dies down, I might bother getting some stuff to decorate my ships or shops or something, but it's really just not that important to me.

Lessee, what can I say about today? I was given a new project at work. It's going to make my head explode, there's so much to learn, ack.

I did find out that sugar-free hot chocolate sucks a lot less in higher concentrations than it does when watered-down -- this shouldn't be a surprise, of course.

Gym today was good, though I should decide really soon whether I'm going to join the place for real after August (if I join by the end of this month I get a discount). I'm doing okay with my upped weights, too, which is nice.

D&D afterwards -- again, just one big battle, but it was pretty funny all along and not nearly that dangerous until this really big nasty undead dude came out and cast Horrid Wilting on our party, which is a super-nasty spell, and fortunately my character had ducked out of the room right before he did. After the battle, I got his spellbook, which was pretty damn cool, except for the fact that I'm an evoker who doesn't cast enchantments or necromantics. Doh.

I came home and did laundry and played PP. The laundry was really important, because it'd been about two weeks since I did laundry last. The PP was less important, but I got to catch up with Rome and Parka, which was nice... it really is just like one big IM client now :)

man, I can't believe it's been almost 3 years exactly I've been out here...