it's been such a long time

It really has been a very long time since I've posted up here, and I regret to say that this is one of the few times that I've been able to sit down for half an hour and be able to type up a whole post. Looking back now, I used to be a very frequent poster(up to 5 times a week in some instances), but the majority of the posts would lack flavor. It would just be me going through what we talked about in class that day or what I did over the weekend. I learned a very valuable lesson through an anonymous reader that for a post to be good you have to include your opinions into things. I think this coupled with the fact that I'm a lot busier than I used to be is the reason that I only post a couple of times per month.

I'm going to go as far back as I can remember with this post, so I guess that I'll start Thursday. I'm not exactly sure what I did during the day, probably something along the lines of stocks, but like I said, I can't be sure. Later on, I stopped at walmart to get pop before going over to christina's for a cookout. When I got there, it was her, mark, herold, phil, dave, ashley, kate, and myself. For the rest of the night, people would pop in and out of there. We attempted to cook food, but the major problem with that was the propane in the tank was incredibly low. It didn't help that we are for the most part amateurs and it took us so long to figure that out. Nonetheless, I couldn't have picked better people to eat raw potatoes and burned kolbassi with. We threw football around until it got dark and then went inside to play the always riveting apples and apples. If you've never played before, it's hard to explain. The crux of the game is that a deck of adjectives circles around and on every turn someone flips up a card with an adjective in it and the other players who hold cards with nouns on them try to pick what noun would fit the adjective the best. What made the game best is the fact that I am the smallest part jewish and every time I would pick an adjective either dave, mark, or herold would put something like anne frank or the Holocaust down. I knew it was all good natured so I didn't care too much. After leaving there around 1145, I met some old high school friends at the giant eagle in brentwood. We went back to a house and bullshitted for awhile until it got late. It was nice to see justov and kazour again because I had seen everyone else at one point or another during the school year or this summer. After listening to tom and ferg do ray romano impressions on the way home, I crashed about 4 AM.

Ring, ring, ring! "Fuck" was my initial thought when I woke up at 8 AM the next morning. I immediately turned to my alarm and reset it for 8:30 hoping that I could catch a little more shut eye before the long drive up to penn state. However, after about five minutes of staring at the alarm clock, I decided I was awake enough to go. I hopped into the shower and zipped over to mark's place. We went and got donuts and milk to try to wake us up, and we picked up christina and mandi around 9:30. The drive up was really smooth after we got far enough along 22 because for awhile you hit a light every two or three minutes. After arriving at around 1, we ate at College Pizza, which was being renovated as we ate. After stopping at a penn state store and at the bookstore to check out prices on books for next year, we went to a place that I hear people rave about, but I had not been: The Creamery. It lived up to its hype. If you're ever in State College, you need to go there because you get a really good ice cream cone for $2.50. By the time we left at 4, I was beat. On the way home, mark and christina slept while mandi and I talked about a lot of different subjects. It was a good talk, and we arrived home around 7:30. I was completely beat, but once I got home I decided that I had enough left in the tank to join rossi and bradburn for a short night out. We went to Half Price books and Barnes and Noble at South Hills Village to look for books. The highlight of the journey was the fact that some kid was tripping out on acid and pompously decided to park his ass on the concrete in front of the mall. I mean, he couldn't have passed out in an alley or something? After that, we all watched a couple episodes of Scrubs and went to Eat n Park to finish out the night.

Saturday morning I had some things to do before I went out with the Nayhouse family to the Pirate game for his birthday. We all had a good time minus the fact that the Pirates blew a 7-1 lead after Gorzelanny tossed six quality innings. Despite the fact that they are only five games under .500. it's hard to root for the Pirates. When you have seen your baseball team do nothing but lose, lose, lose, and lose some more for the last 14 years, your support for the team is going to be called into question. Anyways, I came home and slept because I was still really tired from driving all day Friday. I had a ton of work to do Sunday morning, but I got it done surprisingly fast. After finishing up, I went down to the field to catch the second of my brother's games against a team from West Virginia. After a back and forth struggle, they ended up losing 10-7. It was much better than the first game where they lost 23-4 against the same team. Going to those games is hard for me for a couple of reasons. First, I wish that I could be out there so bad. It doesn't matter what sport I'm watching or what level I'm watching it on, if I have played it before I want to be out there with everyone else. I can get enjoyment out of watching sports, but nothing compares to being out there. Also, I'm pretty sure my brother has lost a lot of passion for baseball. I'll admit that I lost passion when I was 13 and 14, but I regained it for my last three seasons. Some of the best memories from my baseball career came from when I was 12 and when I was 16. Not to be cocky, but when I was 12 I was one of the two most dominating pitches in the league. At the end of the season our team went on to win the championship. When I was 16, I played with nayhouse for the Squirrel Hill team. Nothing could match the passion that I had while I was playing for that team and it helped me to forget a lot of the other things that were going on in my life. However, I'm beginning to ramble again, so I'm going to get back on track. After going home, I realized that I hadn't eaten and that there was nothing at my house. Sarah and I agreed to go to Eat n Park for dinner. Truthfully, it was a really enjoyable dinner because it was so laid back between us. Sometimes when we hang out it feels like the tension is really thick in the air, but after awhile you just kinda get past it and learn how to have a really good time. And that's exactly what we did. She dropped me off and I decided to relax for the rest of the night.

When I woke up today at 11, I had the feeling in my gut that it wasn't going to be a productive day. To make a long story short, I was right. I didn't check any of my stocks today after I saw that DNDN(a stock I recommended at my other blog, www.loosethebulls.blogspot.com) was up 15%. I watched a ton of episodes of Scrubs from the first season, and remembered how well that first season resonated with me. At about 4, I went to play basketball at snyder park with a few others. We played until about 6:30 and decided to get pizza afterwards. It was ben, creighton, tomko, and myself. Ben and I told stories while we munched down two larges at Venice Pizza. Afterwards, I continued my day of doing nothing by watching High Stakes Poker for two hours and finally getting on here to type a post for the first time in a long time.

For the first time in a very long time, I can say that this weekend was really, really good. It is one of the few weekends that I will store in my memory forever as me saying that I had an incredible time. It worked out so well because I was able to balance everything so well, from work to housework to friends. I'm going to end this post with something that I haven't done in a long time: a poem.

Villanelle
By: Marilyn Hacker

Every day our bodies seperate,
explode torn and dazed.
Not understanding what we celebrate

we grope through languages and hesitate
and touch each other, speechless and amazed;
and every day our bodies seperate

us further from our planned, deliberate
ironic lives. I am afraid, disphased,
not understanding what we celebrate

when our fused limbs and lips communicate
the unlettered power we have raised.
Every day our bodies seperate

routines are harder to perpetuate.
In wordless darkness we learn wordless praise,
not understanding what we celebrate;

wake to outselves, exhausted, in the late
morning as the wind tears off the haze,
not understanding how we celebrate
our bodies. Every day we seperate.



mh

the bottom of the ninth

"You want to be like me? Hell newbie, most days I don't want to be like me."
-Dr. Cox, Scrubs

In every sense of the word, he had an unorthodox style for closing games. He would(almost intentionally) get at least two people on base with a maximum of one out before he would turn it up a notch and actually begin to pitch. Of course, I'm referring to Mike "The Cardiac Kid" Williams. His 12 year career included stints with 5 different teams, including my hometown Pirates. Every time Williams would enter a ball game in the ninth inning, you had to strap in your seatbelt, because anything could really happen. Nobody that I knew could understand why Williams would seemingly attempt to put himself in the absolute most dangerous situation to lose the game that was possible. Then, almost miraculously, he would realize that his role as a closer was to not blow the lead and would begin to pitch like Cy Young himself. His style often reminds me of the little kid who you keep telling to not touch the hot stove yet continues to do it because he thinks he won't get burned. The problem is, if you touch a hot stove too many times, you're bound to leave your hand on there for too long.

I woke up today feeling kinda lacksadasical. I spent the better of the day slamming into my head accounting and stat formulas that I'll need to know for the final and ones that I'll more than likely forget the second I stop using them. Accounting has been great for the brief time that we spent on the stock market. I loved that part of the course and it really just confirmed something I knew already, that I wanted to go into the financial part of the business world. Stat has been a watered down version of an educational statistics class that I took in my first semester at PSU. There haven't exactly been any great insights that I've had while taking the class and I expect to have an A in there at the end of the semester. Calculus is always a little bit tricky for me because I remember the basic formulas for doing the work yet I always seem to miss one little thing that costs me a few points per problem. In other words, I need to study a lot and do a lot of practice problems to secure the A. Unfortunately, I only have brief flashes of inspired greatness where I lay out this grandiose plan to teach myself advanced calculus and physics so I won't even have to worry about studying for future exams. Problem is, the process becomes incredibly tedious and my patience begins to wear thin after about five minutes of handling difficult concepts. I have always said that the most trying time in the school year is the last two weeks of the second semester because you are flat out burned by that time. You have to dig really deep for a last hoorah, especially if you've been grinding it out since the end of August till early May.

After cramming things into my brain for several hours, I decided to get Subway and attempting to plan out my night. Although I hate being the person behind things, everything tends to go smoother when I'm the "architect" if you will, of these things. Everyone came over Nayhouse's around 9 and we all relaxed in the hot tub until about 10:15. We all went downstairs afterwards to shoot pool. Once again, everything going fine until I saw something that of course I blew out of proportion, because that seems to be the thing that I do best. It left me in a bad mood, and I left around 11:20 to take her home. Out of all my friends, there are two people that stand above the rest, and they are nayhouse and her. I never argue with nayhouse, so that's what makes our constant fights so difficult for me to swallow. After a few minutes of screaming, I just thought out loud, why are we always fighting? And then it hit me: there is a fundamental difference between two people. I, like a true idiot, believe that love can exist under any circumstances if two people try hard enough to make it work. She sees it much differently. I respect her opinion, but I obviously don't like it. I don't really feel the need to expand upon that, so you can guess what else was said in between.

In the spring of 1999, the Pittsburgh Pirates were in the hunt for first place in the NL Central for the first time in seven years. Fans were beginning to turn out to Three Rivers Stadium again in hopes that this team could turn it around like the Pirate teams from earlier in that decade. I only went to one game that year, and I remember it quite fondly. The Pirates, as always, got off to a shaky start. I believe that Francisco Cordova was pitching that game, and he let up two runs in the first inning. After Cordova settled down, the Bucs battled back with a few hits from Jason Kendall, Al Martin, and Warren Morris(yes, I said it, Warren Morris). Anyways, by the eighth inning, the score was 4-2 in favor of the Pirates. Cordova looked like he was getting into a jam, but got a taylor made double play ball with runners on first and third to preserve the two run lead. In what I believed at the time was a dumb and controversial move, manager Gene Lamont made a not so memorable move: he brought Mike Williams in for the ninth inning. This is a move that we started to see a lot in the last decade and led to the unfortunate(in my opinion) theory that anytime you have a lead by less than three in the ninth inning, you must bring your closer in to finish the game. Williams began the inning by walking the first guy. After getting a strikeout, Williams was struck with bad luck as what seemed like a very routine ground ball was flopped by then first baseman Kevin Young. Kevin Young is best noted for being one of the worst hitters in history that ever earned 2 million dollars in one season. Not only was Young hitting an embarassing .220 at the time, he was also making errors like he was being payed to do it. With runners on first and second, Williams managed to get the next guy to pop out. Then, just as it seemed Williams was going to get out of this with his life and the Pirates were going to be in first place for the first time in seven years, something happened. Williams' patented slider was demolished on the first pitch he threw. I remember watching that ball sail over the right field fence at old Three Rivers thinking that we still had the bottom of the ninth. Unfortunately, the Pirates weren't able to mount any comeback in the bottom half of the ninth and ended up finishing the season in third, despite rumors preseason that they were ready to make a charge for the pennant that year.

I tell you that very long story because I was reminded of it while watching Baseball Tonight sometime recently. They were doing a story about the Pirates and how they had been such a terrible team for so long. They ended up going back to the 1999 season and pegging that game as the game that sent them into decline for the next seven seasons. Anyone with a brain knows that isn't true though. Poor management, inability to keep young talent, and a string of atrocious offseason acquisitions prevented the Pirates from returning to anything resembling glory. Even though there may be a breaking point, we need to examine everything else that built up to that point to know what really went wrong. As they showed the clip of Williams' slider tailing on the outside corner, I realized something: it wasn't that bad of a pitch. Free swinging Sammy Sosa just decided that he was going to go after the first pitch and his steriod enhanced performance allowed him to bury the Pirates that day. It got me to thinking that sometimes when you're in the ninth you can throw a great pitch and still have it get hammered. The thing is though, you can't just give up after you have a rocky outing. Williams showed that by rebounding to finish with twenty or so odd saves that year and the next before retiring. Because the truth of the matter is, in life, you're going to get more than one chance to close down the game in the bottom of the ninth.



mh