It's 2012? Must be time for another entry ... and a meme?
Greetings! I'm still alive, although obviously not posting much. Work has been crazy, although they seem to like the job that I've been doing. I've been spending a lot of time trying to be a reasonably good partner and uncle, and I've been playing and watching a lot of baseball. That and a few karaoke outings for fun.
The craziest was in West Virginia, where I went for work. The hotel that I was staying at had karaoke on Wednesday night, and because it was a fairly small place (only a couple of dozen people) everyone got to sing a lot. At one point as I was preparing to sing a song the guy running the show exhorted more people to sing. "Don't MAKE me sing all night" I said, and after a pause added "because I WILL." As it was I sang:
Almost Heaven
Freedom '90
Gimme Three Steps
Paradise by the Dashboard Light
Dead or Alive
And a couple of other songs. The crowd went nuts for the first (West Virginia, go figure), but the George Michael song got a confused, polite response. Sensing which way they weres going, I came back with Lynyrd Skynyrd - which they loved. Pay attention to your audience! ;) Other highlights included one of the women from the work team singing "Baby Got Back" - she knew ALL the words. Didn't see that coming! Another was the two guys who sang I've Got You, Babe - the bald guy singing the Cher part flipped his non-existent hair at one point, to much hilarity.
Thanks to the crazy/warm weather in DC this year (favorite FB status post of a friend this year: "Winter isn't coming;" I told him that was a Stark assessment), I was able to start bicycling to work for a few days in February, and then regularly in March. The cherry blossoms were out a full ten days early, but since I bicycle past the Tidal Basin twice every workday I at least got to see them. We didn't get to go down for a close look this year, which I try to do very year. The cherry blossoms are one of my favorite things about living in the DC area. Despite the warm weather, though, my baseball season has gotten off to a rocky start. Most of my games have been at 8am on Sundays (blech), and two of them were on days that were actually chilly. The two weeks before this week the games were postponed because of rain. AFTER I got up early and drove out to the fields. Was really glad to get back to playing today, pitching three innings and getting three hits in five at bats, with one stolen base and three runs scored. A guy on the team called me "sneaky fast" today; I asked him if that meant that I'm not quite as slow as I look. "Basically" he replied. We look after each other on the team :D
There's a lot more, but as Inigo Montoya once said "Eez too much, lemme sum up." Life has its ups and downs, but I still feel very lucky overall. And one way to stay lucky is to honor one's internet obligations, right?
And so, a meme, fulfilling an obligation, to booknerdguru. Comment on this post with "I love libraries" and I’ll give you seven things I want you to talk about. They may make sense or they may be totally random. Then post that list to your journal with your commentary. Other people can get lists from you and the meme merrily perpetuates itself. The topics that she left for me:
Baseball: It's hard for me to be even a little bit brief on baseball. It's funny; neither of my parents were fans. Despite the fact that I have memories from when they were here, I have no memory at all of the Senators. Being nerds, when my brother and I discovered baseball, the first thing that we did was read everything we could about it. And since if you read about baseball history you're reading about the Yankees, we became Yankee fans. This notwithstanding that the Yankees were pretty terrible at the time and the Orioles and A's were the class of the American League (you could look it up). Still a big Yankee fan, but since DC (finally) got its own baseball team, I've become a Nationals fan as well. It's been fun to watch the Nationals get so much better over the past three years; as I write this they are in first place, despite a series of injuries that would have devastated most teams. The Yankees have had their own set of injuries, and are still sorting out their impact. Who needs reality TV, with entertainment and plot lines like these?
I also love playing baseball. I was cut (quickly) from my HS baseball team, but in my late 20's began playing in various local leagues. It's a big part of my life; there's something pure about being in the moment as you're playing that is hard to explain. It helps keep me young :)
Choir: Singing is also really important to me. I don't come from a very musical family, although my Mom sings. When I'm on there's a certain ring in my upper register (I'm a tenor) that I think she has, too. I'm not sure I've ever told Mom that :) I didn't start to sing much until college, and also have sung in church choirs for many years as well. I also sang for a year with a chamber chorale, Voce. Along the way I also found musical theater (at law school?) and have done around 40 shows. But although my views on religion are complicated, I will say that singing praise music is special.
Biking: I do ride, but I'm not a serious cyclist. Serious cyclists love to get up at oh-dark-thirty on weekend mornings and go get their century in before 3pm. Me? I'd rather sleep late. I will train and do long bicycle rides, but only for charities. I've done bundle of charity bicycling events, and have raised over $70,000 for various HIV/AIDS charities. Longest ride I've ever done was from San Francisco to Los Angeles (seven days, 560 miles). Longest single day's ride was 116.7 miles (oy). I've bicycled from Raleigh NC to Washington DC (four days, 330 miles) several times. I'll probably do another charity event again soon, but in the meantime I bicycle commute for most of the year. So, 11 miles a day. I love it - the scenery around DC is great, I spare the planet some energy and some pollution, and for most of the year I don't have to schedule my cardio. That, and it's a great way to put the workplace behind me at the end of a long day.
hilarious memories of booknerdguru's mother: Hm. I had to mull this over; I am keenly aware that dkesler can exact serious revenge if I am not very careful with this one! But I think I can share this memory. Back in the day, dkesler and I went to see the movie Hair. This was also when the country was reinstating selective service registration (for a military draft, if necessary). When I expressed that I would serve if I was called upon to do so, dkesler made it clear that she disagreed - to the extent of threatening to knock me out, throw me in the trunk of her car and drive me to Canada to keep me from joining up. Fortunately for all concerned, that ambition was not tested. And since her husband Phillip served in the Army, her views have obviously evolved over time!
Hockey: I don't mind hockey, but it's not my thing particularly. I've been to a few Caps games and enjoyed them, and it's nice when they win, but I doubt that hockey will never approach baseball and football in my sports interests.
Favorite recent book: I wish I had more to report here; I love to read, but most of my reading these days is periodicals. This keeps me up on current events, but it doesn't really feed the mind. But I have recently read Coming of Age in the Milky Way, and I highly recommend it. Most of the book is a wonderful, readable walk through the expanding sense of awareness of the universe and our place in it through human history. I won't pretend that I completely understood the abstract mathematical concepts in the last couple of chapters. But I'm still trying :)
Favorite film. Wow, this is really hard; and ultimately I couldn't choose just one single favorite movie. I'm a big fan of The Princess Bride, Love, Actually and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. While having a real weakness for romantic comedies (The Notebook, Don Juan Demarco and Serendipity are honorable mentions on this list), I also own and watch the LOTR movies (the Extended Versions, of course - aka, the real movies). I love Galaxy Quest, and always take time for a good superhero movie. A long non-answer, but that's the best I can do ... because I am outta here!
The craziest was in West Virginia, where I went for work. The hotel that I was staying at had karaoke on Wednesday night, and because it was a fairly small place (only a couple of dozen people) everyone got to sing a lot. At one point as I was preparing to sing a song the guy running the show exhorted more people to sing. "Don't MAKE me sing all night" I said, and after a pause added "because I WILL." As it was I sang:
Almost Heaven
Freedom '90
Gimme Three Steps
Paradise by the Dashboard Light
Dead or Alive
And a couple of other songs. The crowd went nuts for the first (West Virginia, go figure), but the George Michael song got a confused, polite response. Sensing which way they weres going, I came back with Lynyrd Skynyrd - which they loved. Pay attention to your audience! ;) Other highlights included one of the women from the work team singing "Baby Got Back" - she knew ALL the words. Didn't see that coming! Another was the two guys who sang I've Got You, Babe - the bald guy singing the Cher part flipped his non-existent hair at one point, to much hilarity.
Thanks to the crazy/warm weather in DC this year (favorite FB status post of a friend this year: "Winter isn't coming;" I told him that was a Stark assessment), I was able to start bicycling to work for a few days in February, and then regularly in March. The cherry blossoms were out a full ten days early, but since I bicycle past the Tidal Basin twice every workday I at least got to see them. We didn't get to go down for a close look this year, which I try to do very year. The cherry blossoms are one of my favorite things about living in the DC area. Despite the warm weather, though, my baseball season has gotten off to a rocky start. Most of my games have been at 8am on Sundays (blech), and two of them were on days that were actually chilly. The two weeks before this week the games were postponed because of rain. AFTER I got up early and drove out to the fields. Was really glad to get back to playing today, pitching three innings and getting three hits in five at bats, with one stolen base and three runs scored. A guy on the team called me "sneaky fast" today; I asked him if that meant that I'm not quite as slow as I look. "Basically" he replied. We look after each other on the team :D
There's a lot more, but as Inigo Montoya once said "Eez too much, lemme sum up." Life has its ups and downs, but I still feel very lucky overall. And one way to stay lucky is to honor one's internet obligations, right?
And so, a meme, fulfilling an obligation, to booknerdguru. Comment on this post with "I love libraries" and I’ll give you seven things I want you to talk about. They may make sense or they may be totally random. Then post that list to your journal with your commentary. Other people can get lists from you and the meme merrily perpetuates itself. The topics that she left for me:
Baseball: It's hard for me to be even a little bit brief on baseball. It's funny; neither of my parents were fans. Despite the fact that I have memories from when they were here, I have no memory at all of the Senators. Being nerds, when my brother and I discovered baseball, the first thing that we did was read everything we could about it. And since if you read about baseball history you're reading about the Yankees, we became Yankee fans. This notwithstanding that the Yankees were pretty terrible at the time and the Orioles and A's were the class of the American League (you could look it up). Still a big Yankee fan, but since DC (finally) got its own baseball team, I've become a Nationals fan as well. It's been fun to watch the Nationals get so much better over the past three years; as I write this they are in first place, despite a series of injuries that would have devastated most teams. The Yankees have had their own set of injuries, and are still sorting out their impact. Who needs reality TV, with entertainment and plot lines like these?
I also love playing baseball. I was cut (quickly) from my HS baseball team, but in my late 20's began playing in various local leagues. It's a big part of my life; there's something pure about being in the moment as you're playing that is hard to explain. It helps keep me young :)
Choir: Singing is also really important to me. I don't come from a very musical family, although my Mom sings. When I'm on there's a certain ring in my upper register (I'm a tenor) that I think she has, too. I'm not sure I've ever told Mom that :) I didn't start to sing much until college, and also have sung in church choirs for many years as well. I also sang for a year with a chamber chorale, Voce. Along the way I also found musical theater (at law school?) and have done around 40 shows. But although my views on religion are complicated, I will say that singing praise music is special.
Biking: I do ride, but I'm not a serious cyclist. Serious cyclists love to get up at oh-dark-thirty on weekend mornings and go get their century in before 3pm. Me? I'd rather sleep late. I will train and do long bicycle rides, but only for charities. I've done bundle of charity bicycling events, and have raised over $70,000 for various HIV/AIDS charities. Longest ride I've ever done was from San Francisco to Los Angeles (seven days, 560 miles). Longest single day's ride was 116.7 miles (oy). I've bicycled from Raleigh NC to Washington DC (four days, 330 miles) several times. I'll probably do another charity event again soon, but in the meantime I bicycle commute for most of the year. So, 11 miles a day. I love it - the scenery around DC is great, I spare the planet some energy and some pollution, and for most of the year I don't have to schedule my cardio. That, and it's a great way to put the workplace behind me at the end of a long day.
hilarious memories of booknerdguru's mother: Hm. I had to mull this over; I am keenly aware that dkesler can exact serious revenge if I am not very careful with this one! But I think I can share this memory. Back in the day, dkesler and I went to see the movie Hair. This was also when the country was reinstating selective service registration (for a military draft, if necessary). When I expressed that I would serve if I was called upon to do so, dkesler made it clear that she disagreed - to the extent of threatening to knock me out, throw me in the trunk of her car and drive me to Canada to keep me from joining up. Fortunately for all concerned, that ambition was not tested. And since her husband Phillip served in the Army, her views have obviously evolved over time!
Hockey: I don't mind hockey, but it's not my thing particularly. I've been to a few Caps games and enjoyed them, and it's nice when they win, but I doubt that hockey will never approach baseball and football in my sports interests.
Favorite recent book: I wish I had more to report here; I love to read, but most of my reading these days is periodicals. This keeps me up on current events, but it doesn't really feed the mind. But I have recently read Coming of Age in the Milky Way, and I highly recommend it. Most of the book is a wonderful, readable walk through the expanding sense of awareness of the universe and our place in it through human history. I won't pretend that I completely understood the abstract mathematical concepts in the last couple of chapters. But I'm still trying :)
Favorite film. Wow, this is really hard; and ultimately I couldn't choose just one single favorite movie. I'm a big fan of The Princess Bride, Love, Actually and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. While having a real weakness for romantic comedies (The Notebook, Don Juan Demarco and Serendipity are honorable mentions on this list), I also own and watch the LOTR movies (the Extended Versions, of course - aka, the real movies). I love Galaxy Quest, and always take time for a good superhero movie. A long non-answer, but that's the best I can do ... because I am outta here!