A Long Way Away

I know. It's early. But I sort of have to be excited for the Reds, who have come out of the gate strong. As of this writing, we're 12-7, and up 3-1 on the Nats, good for 2nd in the NL Central, and half a game up on the Cards for the wild card. So far everything has worked out well, basically. Arroyo has been good, Harang has been solid, and Weathers has actually been alright as a closer. The rest of the pitching has been good enough. On offense, it turns out that Adam Dunn is pretty good, and the rest of the lineup can hit. Kearns has finally hit like he was supposed to after his stellar minor league career and his rookie season. And we've been doing this without Griffey for the last couple weeks. So maybe the Reds can stay in the race for a while this year. I think that we need to have either Williams, Milton, or Claussen step up (or get another starter), and get lucky with the bullpen (ideally, have Wagner come back up and take over the back end of games). But the Reds have figured how to play at home, and are becoming a team that no one wants to face (not so much because they're great, but they can ruin your bullpen in a 3 game series).

But in all likelihood, by the time the All-Star break rolls around, the Reds will have lost ground, and will likely be out of the race. And I'll switch my allegiance to the Yankees.

What I love about the start of every season is redemption. Some teams look like they are just rejuvenated. Everyone has a chance. Every team has talent on there, enough talent that lets you wonder, "what if...?" If everything falls right. If the talented pitcher with the live arm gets the control down... If the power hitter who can't lay off bad pitches could just learn to be a little more patient... If the young relief pitcher would just not have those mental blowups out on the mound... If the infield plays as well as it did last year... If the outfield hits like it did two years ago... you may just have enough to make a run at the pennant.

We know that some teams go in year in and year out and are expecting to win. These teams just walk in there knowing that they are good, and they go out and prove it. The regular season is almost an informal interview, with the playoffs being the true testing grounds. They just have a feeling of greatness. Many teams will have this feeling at the start of the season.

And for some teams, the feeling lasts longer than others. Some teams come out stumbling, and their seasons are over before they even started. Sure, they may make a late run in August and September and finish with a respectable record, maybe even .500. But they aren't going to win any pennants. But they'll make everyone interested for next year, since they flashed a glimmer of hope late in the season.

Other teams last for a while, and then fade, when everyone understands that they just weren't quite talented enough this year. The young guys were a little too young. The old guys were a little too old. They were able to keep it up for a couple months. But baseball... it's a journey. You don't sprint the whole way. Teams that use up all of their mojo by June... well, they usually don't hold on. But it's a building block for the franchise. They can figure out where they need to improve. A new starter. Another left-handed bat. A lefty out of the 'pen. Maybe next year.

Everyone has hope. At least for a little while. Let's see if my Reds can carry this on for a little while longer and make some folks in the NL Central sweat.

-Chairman

Project Self: Living the Vision

There are some people that I know who excel at setting long-range visions. They seem to be able to envision what it is that they want, and they go about doing it. I admire their discipline. They seem to be phenomenal at figuring out what it is that they need to do, seemingly moment by moment. Unfortunately, it seems robotic sometimes. I think that these folks will sometimes miss out on some of the journey, and don't always discover everything there is to know about themselves or about the world around them. But they usually end up being pretty successful in whatever it is that they do.

Then there are some people that I know who seem to have no plan, but just take life as it comes. I admire how they see every day as a new adventure. The element of spontaneity, randomness and adventure in their lives seems to be so alluring. They tend to learn a lot about their environment and have a great time doing it, but often end up with no guidance in the big picture.

And of course, there are people who neither embrace every day as an adventure or have long -term visions about life. I don't generally admire these folks as much. They don't seem to have as much fun as they should, nor do they seem to accomplish as much as they should. In fact I would say that these folks don't own their shit. I don't really want to worry about these folks too much. But it's interesting. I sat down to think about life earlier today, and I realized that I don't really do either... but I'd like to think that I own my shit.

Here's what I mean... I think that if you were to ask my friends to describe me, you'd have some folks say that I have a strong long-term vision and I'm pretty dedicated to making these visions happen. After all, I'm getting a PhD, I've got a research program sketched out, and I'll be a professor somewhere in a couple years.

And you'd also have some of my friends think that I'm sort of aimless long-term, but really have a lot of interesting, random experiences. I mean, I can tell you all sorts of stories about how I broke bread with a convicted killer last Saturday, how I've had slushies made with Mexican water and eaten noodles at 1am in random neighborhoods in Shanghai, and about how I've hung out with hitchikers in New Mexico.

I think that where this comes from is what it is that I am moving towards and how I get there. One thing that I think is true about myself is that I am pretty good at medium-range planning. I've never had the true drive to set out after a long-range, mutliple-year goal. And I get bored too easily to keep up most sorts of repetitive tasks. And in the short-term, it's not that I just go out there with reckless abandon. Really, I don't do a lot of planning, really, other than leave my schedule open. I enjoy doing spontaneous things, and will take random detours if it strikes my fancy. But my mid-range goals tend to build on themselves in a way that it looks like I have a long-term goal. And really, I probably do have a long-term goal. I just don't know what it is, yet. I think that I'm just disciplined enough to make my mid-term goals. And I'm just spontaneous enough to do things that a lot of people don't get to experience.

As I think about how I would like to be, I realize that I would like to be just a little more disciplined. Not that I want to be able to achieve more long-term goals. But so that I can more free time to do other fun things. For example, this summer, I have to get a summer paper done. This is a pain in the ass. And I'm going to turn down a summer RA position because I want to dial in on the paper. It would only be 10 hours a week, but I don't want to be burdened. After all, I'd only be making something like $17 an hour. My time is worth a lot more than that. I figure that this will take a dedicated 150 hours to churn this paper out. Really, this can be done in 3 weeks. But what fun would that be? I've got 10 weeks to do it, so I'm going to take 10 weeks. Well, maybe 9.

There's all sorts of other stuff that I'm going to do this summer. Road trips. Hanging out with friends. Learning new cooking techniques. Finishing that damned novel that I've had sitting there for 2 years, and then re-write it. I'm going to learn to ride a motorcycle. And after I learn, I'll get my motorcycle license, and there's a chance that I'll even buy a motorcycle. I want to cruise around for a while, stopping in different towns, finding local eats and local conversation and inspiration for what it is I want to do when I grow up. After all, I'm going to be a professor in a couple years, and may not have the chance to do it then.

-Chairman

Insomniac Thoughts

So what happens when you can't sleep? Well, for me, it's like my brain becomes a popcorn machine. All sorts of little bursts that go in every direction.

I need to get my health lined up. I need to be able to carve out 3 hours a day devoted to my health. Part of that is hitting the gym. Part of that is cooking healthy food. Part of that is taking time to pray and meditate. I've been lousy at all three of late. Part of it is that I've been too tired to go lift (bad cycle to get into). Part of it is that I've been too lazy to cook (another bad cycle to get into). This lack of discipline is sort of pissing me off, actually. I think that I've been holding steady, but I'm still at a stage where I need to get healthier. Holding steady is not what I'm wanting to do.

Technology is both a blessing and a curse. The other day, I picked up a little surround sound system. It's pretty cool. I've actually got a sound system for the first time in my life. Of course, since I didn't spend a ton of cash on it, there's only two sets of inputs. So, if I also want surround sound for my VCR, video games, and PC, I need to get some sort cable splitter. What a pain. But I will say that movies are a lot more fun to watch at home now.

I need to get the ball rolling on my research. All of this stuff that I've been doing has been developed pretty well in my head. And now I need to get this stuff down on paper and into the field. Unfortunately, for me, it's not nearly as fascinating to write about stuff that I've learned. While this is how academics show off to the world, and is actually sort of neat to see the outcome, and it's important to get stuff into the collective knowledge banks, I just don't dig it quite as much.

I watched part of Juwana Mann on Comedy Central earlier tonight. What is it about guys dressing up as girls that amuses me so much? And what is it about a guy dressing up as a WNBA player that makes me chuckle... probably it's because we all have that thought of, "geez - this chick basketball is terrible... I could do better." And of course, we see it happen in the movie. And maybe it's because I'm not sleeping, and right now anything is funny.

I'm going to get a little bit of work done over the next couple days, but I'm going to get myself caught up on sleep. I hope. And then, we'll attack the remainder of the semester and get a good start on this summer paper. Should be good times.

-Chairman

How (un)Interesting!

Wow. UCLA-Florida. Uggh. No words to even describe it, other than, "Uggh."

At least baseball is back. Some predictions:

AL Division Winners (and wild card): Yankees, Indians, A's, and Blue Jays
AL Pennant: Yankees
NL Division Winners (and wild card): Braves, Cards, Giants, and Mets
NL Pennant: Mets
World Series Champ: Yankees
AL Cy Young and MVP: Randy Johnson and Alex Rodriguez
NL Cy Young and MVP: Roy Oswalt and Albert Pujols
The real NL MVP: Barry Bonds
Teams that will just miss: Angels, Red Sox, Astros, Brewers
Teams that will make a run early and fade by July: Tigers, Rangers, Padres
Hitters ready to blow up (that no one's talking about): Edwin Encarnacion, Adam LaRoche
Under the radar Cy Young and MVP candidates: Jason Schmidt and David Wright

edit - the "Under the radar" were the NL candidates. Also,
Under the radar AL CY Young and MVP candidates: Jeremy Bonderman and Magglio Ordonez

We'll see how these guesses go.

-Chairman