Every Day an Adventure

Saturday, woke up late after staying up till 5am following Japan Series game 1. Oops. (Marines win 10-1!) Was going to watch World Series game 1 with Oren, then head to Tacoma to hang out with people, but the game didn't end until like 8:30pm and by then it felt like it was too late to go to Tacoma. (50 miles is far, yo.) Oren and I watched a few episodes of the live-action version of YUA, and then I came home.

I slept from 1am-8am -- missing the Japan Series game 2, where the Marines murdered the Tigers 10-0. Hee. I translated the game, then played in the Orny Tourney on PP, then I went out shopping. Picked up some Japanese baseball magazines at Uwajimaya (one of them had a precious feature on Kiyohara, heh), and lunch. (Thai Spice's idea of "medium spice" is what I would consider "really fucking hot".)

I went to Joann Fabric and I picked up... cloth an' stuff. I have an idea for a banner for the PP thing. It's truly... creative, but probably won't be particularly aesthetically pleasing. We'll see if I can get together enough of it by the deadline.

Went to Oren's to watch World Series game 2. I worked on sewing banner stuff during the game. All I have to say is - Podsednik? WTF? Also, I need a "Joe Crede is my boyfriend" shirt. Now I am home and more sewing, and I have "Mr. Baseball" on in the background. Hopefully sleep soon so I can get up early for work.

Monday, I had choir. We had a "website demo" as part of rehearsal. It was sorta dumb, but at least now I know that our concerts are December 9th and 10th. Whee. Also, Part 3 isn't as much fun as Part 2, although you can really hurt your throat singing all of chorus 53.

Went to the gym afterwards as usual, and lifting was fun. I upped my weights for cable row and cable press. I also did running for a bit. I ran for 3.5 minutes straight in between walking; my former best was 2.5 minutes. Go me.

I also learned that Oren was right -- he lent me a TV antenna, and suddenly, I can see red people! That is, the Cardinals. I saw about 20 minutes of the Astros-Cards game before going to choir, which means that I missed the awesome 9th inning - but isn't that what baseball fans live for, those moments? One strike away from the World Series, and suddenly Eckstein bloops a single... Edmonds walks... and Pujols hits a home run to somewhere in the vicinity of Proxima Centauri? Sigh. It's too perfect. I did write my latest "The Postseason" humor piece, this time making fun of the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, eliminated by Chicago on Sunday. I guess whoever wins the NLCS is next up for the ridicule.

I get really sad these days because people keep asking me about various Japanese players.. not because they care, but because they are trying to think of who else they can speculate on the MLB teams signing next and making a huge profit off of. People go on for hours and hours about whether Daisuke Matsuzaka will get posted, or whether Kenji Johjima will decide to sign with an MLB team, and when I go "So what did you all think of the PL Playoffs? Hell of a 5th game there... talk about clutch, did you see Satozaki's 2-run RBI in the 8th?" the response is "What? Who's that? Lotte? Never heard of them, do they have any players we might want to sign here?" I'm worried there won't be any decent baseball players left by the time I get back to a game in Japan. I know it's not really true, but... I'm working on an essay comparing it to the downfall of the Negro Leagues, though I might be stretching a bit far there.

Anyway, today I was braindead, which sucked. I came home from work and played Puzzle Pirates, since it was Squid Pillage Night, although this week I renamed it "Barr Trek: Brig Space Nine". I'm actually pretty psyched for the Key West Parrrty, given the new housing arrangements that might be happening. It sounds like it could be really really really bloody fun, and maybe I won't even have to feel so bad if I can't come up with anything for the banner contest. It's sad, because I'm a fairly creative person (well, or at least *I* think I am), but I'm really drawing a blank on something I can actually *make* for this.

Katy came over for a bit in the evening and we chatted and I gave her a ton of my moving boxes. It's good because I get to help a friend AND get rid of some of the boxes, since they were taking up space that I didn't really have for them.

I've just sort of been relaxing the night away, which is to say, vegging out. Kevin Shiue's supposed to visit town for the second half of the week, so that'll be fun -- or at least it'll be an excuse to go out for sushi, which I have done surprisingly infrequently as of late, and hopefully an excuse to play cards, which I also haven't done at all lately.

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!)

It was a dull Tuesday afternoon in the locker room of Yankees Stadium, the day after a grueling loss in game 5 of the ALDS. Various players were milling about, cleaning out their lockers. Some were still trying to get in some workout time in the weight room, and a few sat around chatting idly. Derek Jeter was sitting by his locker, staring at a piece of paper in his hand.

Mike Mussina walked up to him. "Answering some last-minute fan mail?"

Jeter looked up, as if in a daze. "No... I wouldn't call this fan mail, exactly. Here, read it, Moose."

( I'm going to Yankees Hell for this one, so I'll LJ-cut it )

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. :)

I have to stop staring at numbers.

I came up with a new random arbitrary metric to try to predict the postseason, like I did last year. It's a different metric than I used last time, though. I don't like what it gives me, but I'm going to post it anyway. I'll run last year's metric tomorrow night and see what it comes up with.

Anyway, it says the following (which surprisingly actually agrees mostly with what damienroc was telling me last night... shame I hadn't run these yet when I talked to him, heh)

ALDS:
Angels beat the Yankees in 4
White Sox beat the Red Sox in 5
NLDS:
Padres beat the Cardinals in 5
Braves beat Houston in 3

ALCS:
Angels beat the White Sox in 5
Padres beat the Braves in 5

WS:
Angels maul the Padres in 5


However, I want to point out that my heart still tells me either the White Sox or Cardinals are taking it all this year.

EDIT (10/4, 4pm): Jake Peavy is out with a broken rib or something. Good-bye, Padres. I'm running new numbers tonight.