on being alumni

so every year around this time there is the alimni game at my college. it's when all of us greaduated softballers go back and play the current team. it's really quite fun, then we all get together and eat. (the alumni get to reminisce, and the current players get to have a suitable meal for a chage)

so when the alumni game takes place, i dread it. i always dread it. i get these attacks of anxiety and self doubt, even though it's easier to go to the alumni game than it was to go to college. college for me was very lonesome. and it's funny how even just walking onto campus makes me feel profoundly all by myself. then i get there and i have fun and i chuckle to myself that i was nervous to go.

so anyway, i love to go the alumni game, except that even though we are old and mostly retired players, it is still NOT ACCEPTBLE to make errors. so we still need ice after the game.

but when i do go back, i get to reminicsing and all that fun shit.

but i want everyone to go to the website, and if you live in the area, go check out a game, it really is top drawer sports.

softball

and there are big shake ups in the soccer program there too. i'm pleased that coach McGuigan is still there in the men's program, but i am slightly surprised that he's an assistant now. Still it is good that Coach barosso is now the head coach of the men's program, because those two would make a good coach combination.

women's soccer

far away places

I love the idea if travelling. if i had even a tiny bit moremoney, i would use it to go places. i've been to london, scotland, ireland, Lisbon, and spain. i've also been to california, nevada, arizona, hawaii, and up and down the eastern coast. i just love to go to places that are not where i live. i'm not sure if its because being on holiday is better than being at work, or something else, but i love to go to see new places, and get a map, and learn the culture and personality of the the place.

i like to go to a far away place, and insert myself into its every day life. i imagine it's some sort of escapism, you know anywhere is better than here sort of thing.

in any event, i like to check up on the places i've visited to see how they are getting on without me. so here are some snap shots:

this is in dublin, where my mother and i had a row because we couldn't figure out where we were and were and how we got to where we wanted to go.



also in dublin we heard the word that a-rod had agreed to the trade to the Yankees. we were just like americans- shouting and shouting more about how the yankees made us so mad!

this is in london, my friends and i stayed in a slightly sketchy hotel down the street from bayswater road, right by hyde park. it was not many stars, but who cares? a seven night stay including air fare and taxes cost just $400. you can't really beat that.



in london i dropped a mitten on one of the double decker buses, i didn't notice it until i was off in picadilly circus. i was so upset! but then there was a tap on my shoulder, and there was a man there who had gotten off at the next stop and doubled back to find me (clearly i was a tourist, in a bright blue jacket) and return it to me. that one single gesture reinforeced my belief that people can be good if they choose to be so.





and here is lisbon, i had a fantastic time in lisbon with my friend and her family. such a good time.

take a tour of beautiful lisbon

heart wrenching story, really

so here is the terrible story of the baby who was accidentlly poisoned at a cook out a few summers ago.

http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2005/09/20/case_of_babys_arsenic_death_brings_wrenching_testimony

i read this this morning and my head began to swirl with thoughts. really, how could he mistake rat poison for spring water, wouldn't it smell? but then i thought, but why would he do that? did those parents make him so mad that he would want to kill their child? oh god, but it gets worse and worse! they lost their child by taking him off life support. how awful. but this guy is an old man, and he made this terrible mistake. how equally awful. there is no happy ending possible for anyone involved in this story. just considering the possibilities makes me almost sick with sadness.

but then, as if that weren't bad enough, i have to worry about how i would react if something terrible like that happened in my family. oh gosh, i could worry myself right out of productivity at work if i am not careful.

i guess all i can do is pray for these people. all of them. If prayers were ever needed, this is the situation.

hoo hoo hoo!

yay! i got tickets to the Fighters of Foo on friday! Yay! i had to settle for seats. I really wanted to get the General Admission section. but no luck. a friend of mine has GA Tickets, and i'm hoping to convince him that i should go with him, and i'll unload my seats. I got the seats because i wanted to be sure i would get to go. last year they came to the Fleet pavilion, and i wasn't able to score tickets, so this year I said self, get those tickets no matter what the cost!

I love the foo fighters. i like to think i have outgrown my facination with rock and roll stars, but come on, the foos, man! i saw them once at the paladium, and it was rockin. i just love how clever and crafty and rockin and they are. just enough rock, and just enough slow, and just the right amount of politial soapboxing for me. i dig them.

plus they're easy on the eyes. i realize that they look slightly unkempt and like they haven't taken a shower for a few days, but that is a carefully crafted look, and i dig it. think of joe strummer in 1979. he was dead sexy. and consider trent reznor, even though he's looking a bit older than i remember, he's dead sexy too. and there's the guys from the bouncing souls, and pete yorn too! and jakob dylan.

sigh.

i guess i haven't outgrown my facination with rock and roll stars.

i love internet radio

so here is my unsponsored advertisement. you should check out www.radioiorock.com it's an internet radio station. this guy robert goodman streams radio. i can't tell if it's pre-recorded and he just uploads a zip cartrdge, or if he's got some sort of real elaborite studio or what, but he plays good music. it's really alternative. lots of smiths, and the cure, franz ferdinand, and emo like crazy. but he mixes in some real good brit pop and weird and wacky stuff like paul anka's rock swings album. he's got some real good stuff on there.

tuth be told i would like him to play some stuff he hasn't gotten to yet, like more bouncing souls, the explosion, millencolin, clash, flogging molly and the like, but i really can't complain. it's easily as good as my beloved 'fnx. (they stream too, but it doen't work so well on this workstation www.wfnx.com) i never ever hear the same song twice, the same artist sure, but never ever the same song in one day. it's really quite good.

oh, right now it's Johnny Cash's Personal Jesus. a really good mix of alt stuff. i dig it.

three games up

ah, baseball in september. yesterday tim wakefiled was poetic. he struck out 12! twelve! and that home run that giambi hit was ugly, but it went out, and so it counts.

you can't even know how badly i wanted wakefield to win, and how badly i wanted Randy Johnson to lose. he's a prat. sure he pitches well, and the yankees play well, but i cannot stand them. the same way many NY fans cannot stand the Sox. it's just how it is. and that's ok.

so now we're three games up in the AL East, but i'm nervous for the yankees to play Tampa. Tampa has owned them all season long, and it might be that they are tired of playing the laughingstock against the Devil Rays, so they just might sweep them. that could be very problematic for the sox.

the sox are going to toronto, where we have not really played well this season, so that could be problematic too. but schilling was lights out over the weekend, and for that matter so was wakefield, so i'm begining to be less concerned with the pitching than i was a week or so ago, i just hope that we don't go into a terrible hitting slump, because that will be the kiss of death!

go check it out!

boston globe sox report

update!

so remember a few weeks ago i was whingeing on about my grandmothers purse? well it's been found! i guess i have to take back some (not all) of the naughty things i said in that post. the purse isn't really very beautiful and she used it so much that it really is quite worn, but she loved it so much. it even smells like her old apartment. it's quite sweet really. it's totally not my style, so i can pretty well honestly say that i'll never use it, but if i do a craft fair to sell my made bags, then i'll use it to keep the money in.

reminiscing

when i was in college there was a small circle of people that i considered my friends. there were not too many of them, and that's ok, i don't mind. they were all very important at the time. whether they are now or not is irrelevant, they were very important to me at the time. i think that college in general is a time of life that is taking place without you even realizing it, and before you know it, it's gone, and you don't even realize how important people are, or events and non-events for that matter.

in any case, my friend russ is of italian and scottish decent. he was fiercely protective of both his parent's geaneology. but in a way that only college kids can be- slightly chip on the shoulder, slightly informed, but not totally aware. so he would sprinkle the limited italian that he knew into his slang. the swears and the things like that. many of the rest of the circle were frequently referred to as Stoonod.

so fast forward to today, and i was at work at the pharmacy with paul, and we were generally complaining about people, and lo and behold they are stoonods! i asked if that was a real word- he said of course! it's italian!

so it got me to thinking about how thre are lots of things you learn in college that are so much more useful than you learn in class, or than you can imagine at the time.

:)