Tag: good things

LOL

I haven’t said anything about the teams I’m rooting for (or against, as the case may be) in the postseason because of a superstitious belief that I won’t get my wish if I do so. But now that the Braves and Rays have been eliminated I can say how much I’d wanted them to be eliminated. The Braves because fuck them. (NL East rivals are to be hated, especially when they employ the racist Tomahawk Chop.) The Rays because of so many reasons: my longstanding hatred of Florida sports teams, how utterly obnoxious the local news gets when the Rays are in the postseason, my delight at the crushed spirits of the aforementioned local newscasters when the Rays get bounced, how upset I would be if the Rays won a World Series while I was still living here, the sheer number of reprehensible human beings on the Rays’ roster, etc.

I’ve got playoff baseball in my life and things are working out thus far. Life is good.

Until tomorrow.

Baseball Heaven

I was so excited when I heard that Vin Scully planned to travel with the Dodgers for the postseason. It’s so awesome to be able to listen to him call tonight’s game on the radio (thanks, MLB At Bat) even though it’s being played in Atlanta. I tried to watch the game on mute, but the TV feed is ahead of the radio feed on my iPad and that got old pretty quickly. The beauty of it is that I really don’t feel like I’m missing anything by not watching the game. Of course, if Puig does something that “disrespects the game” (and I hope he does) I’ll be bummed that I didn’t see it live, but I’ll get to see the highlight online so it isn’t that big of a deal.

Y’know, if Vin Scully really is going to retire after next season, I’ll have to make an effort to watch as many Dodgers home games as possible. I can’t imagine Dodgers baseball without Vin Scully, but I realize that all good things must come to an end. I just hope that Scully’s replacement is better than Harry Kalas’. (Man, I miss the good old days when I couldn’t imagine Phillies baseball without Harry Kalas.)

Whoops, this is getting maudlin; I meant to be celebratory. I’m listening to Vin Scully call a Dodgers game on the road! Hooray!

Until tomorrow.

Focusing On The Positive

You guys, Chase Utley and the Phillies have reached an agreement on a two-year contract extension. Yay!!!!!!!

Yes, I know Utley is old and injury-prone (and if I didn’t I have Jim Salisbury to remind me). But here’s the thing: I don’t care. I cannot and will not be rational about Chase Utley; he’s my favorite baseball player and it would kill me to see him in another team’s uniform. Like Ruben Amaro, Jr., I want Chase Utley to be a Phillie for life. And it looks like I’m gonna get my wish 🙂

Until tomorrow.

Month In Review: April

At some point during tonight’s un-fun Phillies game I realized that it was the last day of the month. So thanks for the reminder, craptastical baseball game.

  • Read every day. Yay, I managed to keep this resolution again. I’m slightly disappointed in myself because I only read one book this month (and it isn’t Team of Rivals), but I have to remember that the point is to read; I never set a goal of reading x number of books a month.
  • Blog every day. I managed to keep this resolution as well. Again, the goal never had anything to do with quality (which is good for me, but maybe not so great for you).
  • Exercise every day. Does walking from my desk to the printer a billion times a day count as exercise? ‘Cause that’s about all I did this month.
  • Brush my teeth twice every day. I’m pretty sure I brushed my teeth every morning I left the house, but I know I went to bed without brushing my teeth a lot. I blame my electric toothbrush for this, by the bye. For some reason using the electric toothbrush just feels more difficult or more time-consuming or something and when it’s late and I’m tired I just can’t get the energy to do so. I got rid of my old manual toothbrush to try to force myself to use the electric one, but I think that was a bad move.
  • Stop drinking soda. As previously discussed, I was sticking to this resolution until the day I decided it was doing more harm than good.
  • Break out of my comfort zone. I think I spent a lot of this month actively digging myself deeper into my comfort zone. But I’m not going to beat myself up about it because I’ve spent enough time this month beating myself up over other shit, which probably led to the aforementioned behavior.

Yeesh, this started positive. But, wow, has it gotten dark. I don’t want to end in such a bad place. Let’s see, what are some good things that happened this month? I just got an email from Starbucks informing me that the Mocha Cookie Crumble Frappuccino is back. And apparently there is something called a Caramel Ribbon Crunch Frappuccino, which I must try. The new Frank Turner and Andrew McMahon records came out and they are both fantastic. (Okay, I’ve only listened to the Andrew McMahon record once – it came out today – but I dug it.) I watched (part of) a live baseball game on my iPhone while in my car. How incredibly cool is that? Man, it is awesome to be alive in the 21st century.

Okay, I feel better now.

Until tomorrow.

Issues

Has anyone else had trouble logging in to WordPress recently? This is the second day in a row that I’ve had to use the app on my iPad because the Website didn’t want to load. Grr arrgh.

In happier news, Kevin Devine instagrammed (yes, I made Instagram a verb) pictures of himself and Jesse Lacey in the studio. *swoon* That kind of thing makes me very, very happy 🙂 (I mean, I’d be happier if they were working on a Brand New record, but whatever.)

Oh, and the first Tampa Bay Wawa opens this week!! On Friday, to be specific. Of course, I’m not going to that Wawa since they just had to open the one in freaking Pinellas Park first. It’s just too far to drive just to go to Wawa. Especially since the one near USF opens next Wednesday. Oh my God, I’ll be able to get a Wawa soft pretzel in a little over a week. That is amazing!

Until tomorrow.

You Know What’s Awesome?

E! has a fondness for airing the 2005 film adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. That’s awesome.

I watched Groundhog Day with my parents (because you kind of have to, right?) and when it was over my dad put on Independence Day. (Why is a network even airing Independence Day today? Why? It’s Groundhog Day, after all.) And I’ve really seen quite enough of Independence Day for my lifetime, so I started scrolling through the TV Guide app on my iPad to find something actually worth watching.

The first thing I saw was Cruel Intentions, but I didn’t think it was playing on a basic cable network so I continued my search. And then I saw that E! was saving me with Pride and Prejudice, so yay!

It turns out that Cruel Intentions was playing on basic cable (since I stumbled upon it while trying to find E!), but it was too late; I was only interested in watching Pride and Prejudice at that point. As it happens, Pride and Prejudice is the movie I’ve been falling asleep to for the past few weeks, but I’ve always managed to fall asleep before Lizzie goes to visit Charlotte and Mr. Collins. So how lucky was I that I turned the movie on during the dinner party at Rosings where Lizzie encounters Darcy? Answer: so lucky 🙂

I really should watch Cruel Intentions sometime, though. I haven’t seen that movie in ages.

Until tomorrow.

Yay

Remember last week when I contrasted my wonderful experience at the UPS Store with my hellish experience at the post office? (Yes, hellish. I hate slow-moving lines. And my years in retail taught me to despise checkout counters that aren’t fully staffed and make no move to become fully staffed when there’s a line. Especially during a busy season like two weeks before Christmas. It’s not exactly rocket science.)

Well, UPS wins again because Amazon has already received the package of books I was selling back, looked through them to check their condition, and deposited the gift card into my account. Meanwhile, I have yet to receive confirmation that the rented book I was returning via USPS was received. The one nice thing about having to stand in an interminable line to just drop off the damn package was that the lady gave me a receipt to prove I sent it. So if the package gets lost (which I think is highly probable), at least it won’t be on me; I postmarked the package within the required timeframe.

I’m pretty excited about the gift card, too; it’s a decent chunk of change. I already know some of the books I’m going to buy 🙂 It’ll be like an extended Christmas. (I don’t know about you, but one of my favorite parts of Christmas is the day after when I start buying myself fun stuff with the cash and gift cards that I receive.)

I’d be more stressed out about Christmas right now if I hadn’t wrapped (almost) all of my Christmas gifts today. But I did and they look good 🙂 It’s a fairly decent pile considering how broke I am.

Until tomorrow.

Oh Happy Day?

When I woke up I never imagined that the networks would call the presidential election at 11:15 PM EST. But they did. And it was awesome.

Of course, it’s an hour later and Romney is refusing to concede Ohio and Fox News has apparently become some kind of crazy, surreal theatre piece. (I don’t care how funny Twitter says it is, I don’t watch Fox News.)

But I’m feeling pretty awesome about the outcome of the presidential race 🙂

The worst part was finding out that a couple of baseball players I like disagree with my politics 😦 But all in all, that’s not so bad.

In other awesome election news, Bill Nelson defeated Connie Mack IV to retain his Senate seat. And in races outside of Florida, Elizabeth Warren won and both of the creepy rape guys lost. Plus, Maryland voted for marriage equality and Colorado and Washington voted to legalize marijuana. Way to go, guys 🙂

Oh, and I learned a cool thing about Hillsborough County via Nate Silver’s blog at the New York Times. Historically, it has been the bellwether of Florida in presidential elections. That’s pretty cool. Although I think it’s weird that I’ve lived here for four years and I needed Nate Silver to tell me that. Silly Tampa news media should make a big deal about that.

Okay, time to drink more champagne and then go to bed 🙂

Until tomorrow.

Three For Three

So for the first time in ages there was more than one sporting event that I was invested in today. In fact, there were three.  Of course, I only got to actually watch one of them, but y’know. I mean, who actually wants to watch live sporting events? (Seriously though, MLB.tv blackouts, the NFL, and FOX13 in Tampa can all go eat a bag of dicks. Who cares about screwing over sports fans as long as you get to roll in your billions and billions of dollars?)

All three of the games were a bit rough at one point or another, but they all ended as wins for my teams, which is really all that matters in the end, right? (According to Twitter, the Eagles game was far and away the ugliest, but I wouldn’t know because I didn’t see a single second of it. FOX13 can kiss my ass.)

As far as the Phillies games are concerned, I got to see the more dramatic one, complete with a walk-off base hit. But I would’ve preferred to watch the second one since that one featured a lot of the young guys from the bullpen and, oh yeah, the return of Chooch (2 for 2 with an RBI, NBD). (It is so damn great that ESPN wasn’t broadcasting the game, which was the make-up game from last night’s rain out, and yet those of us who are unable to watch CSN Philly were blacked out because of some shitty agreement between ESPN and MLB. MLB.tv blackouts can go screw.)

But you know what? Who cares? The Eagles won! The Phillies won twice! These are things that do not suck. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to see if MLB.tv has archived the second game yet.

Until tomorrow.