It's Been Awhile

So I haven't posted any actual text on this blog in ages...Still kickin' it in Eugene solo. I love my job and love the people I work with. I just hope that I can have my family with me soon! Outside of work, I've had a little extra free time, but no money, so that has translated into the following activities:

1. Fantasy Football - This season I am in five leagues - The Bankers Bunch (see link on the right) which I've been in for 8 years, the Cramer League, which by my count I've been in for 11 or 12 years (I don't know if we started my junior or senior year in high school), a church league up here and a work league up here. Plus with The Hutch Bros and T-Boy we do a four-man league that we draft over the internets. The other four we all do live drafts for (two this weekend!). Needless to say, when my family and i are back together, I won't even dream of doing this much. Too much time away from home for the drafts. I'll stick to the SoCal ones, where I'll be drafting on-line anyway.

2. $1.50 Movies - We have a cheap theater here, so i've actually been able to see quite a few movies this summer. I usually sneak into a second movie, so really, my movies are costing $0.75. Not bad.

3. Poker! - I actually got to play poker on Sunday night for the first time in MONTHS. A person I work with does a $5 buy-in tournament with her friends from Church and they invited me this week. Only four of us showed up and I finished second, so I kept my $5. Sucky the way I got eliminated. We were heads up and our chip stacks were pretty even. After some agressive betting on both parts, the board read 8-10-J-9 (the 9 came on the turn). I had 7-J suited, so I had been agressive with top pair. I got my straight on the turn and went all-in. The second she called me, I knew she had a queen for the higher straight, and that was all she wrote. She had Q-10 off-suit, so I was suprised that she was keeping up with my agressive betting the whole way.

4. TV - We're getting cable in the apartments today! (I live in a campus apartment right now). I have been living off of high-powered rabbit ears since I got here. I have a good signal on ABC, CBS and NBC and a decent black-and-white view of Fox. Now I'm going to have a clear picture on all of those, just in time for the fall seasons to start! Oh yeah, and a little thing called ESPN...just in time for football season. I'll have another TV post at some point.

5. Church stuff - I was blessed to walk into an awesome church group right away up here, since our friends Katie and Craig are already here and Craig is the Associate Pastor at Calvary Fellowship. On monday nights a bunch of people get together and do some fun activity at the church (Bocce ball, frisbee golf, etc.) and then we go to the music leaders house for a firepit, roasting smores and dogs. Then we usually play some sort of group board game. That has been fun and a great distraction my loneliness.

It's not Louie at the last supper, but it's good...

Flashback of the Day

Season Ocho

For my birthday last month, I got a handful of giftcards for best buy (and I've had some Itunes giftcards for a while), and they've been burning a hole in my pocket! Tommorow I'll finally use some of them as the Simpsons Season 8 DVD set comes out. I've been saving my gift cards for this and a few other things that are coming out soon: a new Weird Al album, the new Killers album, the new Bob Dylan Album and the U2 ZooTV Live from Sydney DVD.

Wisdom of a Friend

My friend Kate said something remarkable on her Blog that really hit home with me: Transition is Tiring. When I first left home to come up here to Eugene, I had a very tough few weeks of depression. I was just tired all of the time. Then we got word of the house selling and we were in a happy transition period, anticipating and planning for the move. Then we fell out of escrow and the bottom fell out again. I still got to go home for six days and spend some time with the kids and with Melissa, but then I had to come back, alone, again. Since I got back almost a week ago, back into this period of transition and an unknown future, I again feel tired all of the time. I didn't get out of bed until 1:30 in the afternoon on Saturday. I've had to drag myself out of bed every day.

I'm ready, Lord, for this transition time to be over! I'm ready to have my family all back together again! I'm ready for answers!

New Bat? Saunders Out?

All of a sudden, this is turning into an Anaheim Angels blog, because that's all I seem to be posting about lately....

Regardless, I'm intruiged by the news today that Andruw Jones has been claimed on waivers by an unspecified team. Could it be the Halos? I would be pretty happy if it were, and if the trade got worked out for Saunders and/or Bootcheck. As long as Weaver isn't part of it. Weaver would have been worth it if we had pulled off the Soriano deal, but not for Jones.

Here's to hoping that we get a bat, so that we can stick with the A's for the next two months...