Procrastination and Memories

Let's see. It's just about 5am on Thursday. I have a revision due to my professor 12 hours ago, and my final paper is due on Monday. So let's post on my blog.

First thing that's interesting to me is the Chicago White Sox. These guys remind me a lot of the '90 Reds team. Wire to wire, but a bit of a fade in the 2nd half. Won convincingly in the playoffs over teams that people thought were going to beat them. Did it with pitching and a good bullpen, along with some clutch hitting. A little difference was that the Sox had so many things go right for them this post-season, it was incredible. Just a "team of destiny" sort of thing. And all that's well and good, but what's interesting to me is how this may change things in Chicago. All these silly Cubs fans have been running around, owning the town, despite being the cheering section for a rather poor franchise, historically. Will we see a baseball renaissance in the south side?

Last weekend was Homecoming, and a lot of my old v-ball guys came down for the weekend for their alumni tournament. Good ol' JohnnyO, Pat, Sully, Miller, Barker, Antonio, and all the rest. Friday night at Kam's, and Saturday night at Joe's, followed by Drunken Sing-Along Afterhours. Just like old times. Let's see... at one point, I was parked behind an RV at 2:30 in the morning, putting a keg of beer, a guitar, and 4 other people into my car. Maybe a strange scene for some, but really, just par for the course with these guys. On the positive side, we managed to avoid 1) fights with the offensive line, 2) jail time for anyone involved, and 3) anything that requires antibiotics to treat. And when you can go 3 for 3 on those, it means that you had a good weekend.

Let's see... this weekend? Working on the paper. And once I finish? Halloween. Two years ago, I was a convict, complete with orange jumpsuit and handcuffs. Last year, I went with the doctor, with stethocope, seeing who needed a physical. I think that I'm covering the whole spectrum. I'll be the one at the bars in the priest garb, seeing if anyone wants to go into the confessional. It's either that, or I'll be eating rice krispy treats and drinking punch with kids from Bible study. It could go either way. And you think that I'm joking.

Anyway, it's back to the paper. Next time we're talking about weddings, hooking up with people when you don't know their names, and gambling. I'm sure that you're all excited. Until next time.

-Chairman

On The Road

This is from a couple of weeks ago:

I'm just walking down the corridor, when this announcement comes over the loudspeaker:

“…this flight is severely overweight… we are looking for six volunteers to take the following flight at 3:12…”

Well, I wouldn’t say that they were severely overweight. I took a little walk by Gate 46 so I could judge for myself. They were a little on the chunky side, but to say that this flight was severely overweight may have been a bit of an exaggeration.

That definitely brightened up my day. I’m traveling today. And right now I’m in the Detroit airport. I actually like this place now… sort of. I’ve found a new place to eat. National Coney Island. Good stuff. Different than the old standby of Cincinnati’s Skyline Chili, but it’s tasty. And there’s also a Jose Cuervo Tequileria here, so the 3 hour layover is a little more fun this time with the aid of some the Agave plant’s wonderful uses.

The flight this morning was uneventful. Sort of just drifting in and out of sleep, working on a rough outline for my speech, thinking up plays for flag football, wondering how different my life would be had a couple other choices been made. I’m not sure if it was the 6 hours of sleep that I got last night (after not sleeping well [or much] the last few nights), but I was just in an introspective mood this morning. It carried over into my layover. I had some time so I took a lap around the airport. It’s always interesting.

Who works at the airport?

People without a lot of hope. It’s like the normal service industry that we see, only a little further down the totem pole. Generally, it’s a long way out of town, so there’s a big commute. There are some tough hours, since you need to be ready to sling hash for people getting in on the redeye. And you need to be open for people who are taking the redeye, too… I remember one of my old Illini Updates – these e-mails that I’d send off to my old high school crew during my freshman year, talking about life. I didn’t like Detroit airport back then. A lot of it was from the people who worked here. And boy, I shredded them apart. I didn’t think much about it then. But then again, I was an idiot 18-year old. Things are different now. I’m now an idiot 27-year old.

I was watching the dynamics in the diner. The servers? All white women. They were young, but looked defeated. There was some pleasure in the trite and trivial. But they looked like they were stuck. They had on a happy face when they were interacting with the others. But in their quiet moments, when they were eating, left to their own thoughts, there seemed to be something different. Something quieter, something a little sad. Maybe I had the wrong read. But it sort of depressed me. What if my life were just a little different. What if I wasn’t quite as smart, quite as lucky, born into quite as good a family, just built a little differently. Would that be me?

I’m not sure. And I didn’t stick around long enough to find out. There was a tequila and tonic (with extra lime) with my name written all over it. And it was good.

Who drinks a vodka-water, with lime?

People who are looking to get drunk, without tasting much, and worried about getting ticketed for underage drinking. I was out with CJ last night. Should’ve done some more work or gotten more sleep, but we needed to go out. We’re off at Clybourne, and we see a couple barcrawls going. One was the nursing students. Pretty solid crew, those nurses. Sort of made me want to turn and cough. The other crew was actually very clever. A 3-legged bar crawl, where the girls had their legs tied together and were stumbling around. Definitely good times watching the show. At one point, 4 of the girls stumble over to the bar where we were drinking and start flirting, but a purposeful flirt. They wanted someone to buy them a couple drinks since they had a big, black U stamped on their hands. Having no morals, I obliged, though they wanted vodka-waters, with lime. Didn’t think much of it until later. Just thought that it was a bland, tasteless drink. But then I realized that it was the perfect drink for freshman girls. They didn’t really like the taste of hard alcohols, so they were wanting to keep it sort of plain. They also wanted it to look like just water. So, in the little, clear, plastic cup was this clear liquid with just some lime. Probably didn’t taste like much. But it got the job done. Like I’ve said before. Youth is wasted on the young. If I could go back and take advantage of the energy, enthusiasm, etc. that I had back in the day, armed with what I know now… watch out world.

In a slump…

When you go 0 for 12 in baseball, it’s a little slump. I just walked around the gate prior to boarding. My guess was 0 for about 40. That’s a “get sent down to Triple A to get your swing fixed” sort of slump. Ouch.

Anyway, it’s time to board. Until next time.

-Chairman

One Step At A Time

SURVIVOR: CHAMPAIGN-URBANA

So, another week has been survived. Things lighten up for my classes for a couple weeks, so now I need to dial in on my project. I got feedback from my professor from the last section that I turned in. I'm not setting the world on fire, but there's progress, and that's good enough. This weekend, my goals are to make some edits on what I've written, as well as get a methodology section out to my professor. Once that gets out there, we're pretty miuch in the revision phase. Which is nice. October 31st is just around the corner. The goal was the 15th to get the first draft done. I think think that I'll make it.

I also had to lead discussion for my class on Wednesday. That seemed to go pretty well. It was a livelier conversation than it had been in the previous weeks. I think that some of my small group leading skills helped out. I got some nice feedback from my class paper, and once I take care of the project. Essentially a "revise and resubmit," which means that there's some worthy contribution, but there are parts that need some work. I guess that some of the other students have gotten "desk rejects" (where the editor, or in this case, the professor, automatically rejects the paper and doesn't even pass it on to reviewers) on their papers, so at least I'm not in last place, and I won't be the first one off of the island.

RE-RUNS

I'm curious as to how this whole life thing works. I wonder if there are built-in re-runs. A couple of posts ago, I commented about this girl T that I was into about a year ago. I hadn't really had any contact with her for a few months. So out of the blue, I get an IM. You know, the, "hey, haven't talked to you in forever, how are you doing, we should hang out, etc." one. I'm friendly, but don't commit to anything. Now, I guess the question goes, do I... a) stick to my general philosophy of not making girls feel good about themselves, or b) decide to go hang out with this really hot girl that I think is pretty fun, too? You'd figure that b) would be the obvious choice. But I'm really digging how a) is going right now.

Anyway, life is good. I need some sleep, though.

Until then.
-Chairman